IMPROVEMENTS OF THE ONERA MICRONEWTON THRUST BALANCE

摘要

The micronewton thrust balance developed at ONERArnis presented, and is applied to thrust measurementsrnwith an Indium FEEP thrusters and a cold gas thruster.rnThe principle of the balance and of the calibration isrndetailed, and the post-processing methods arernillustrated. The performance of the balance with arnpulsed thruster is studied. Currently the noisernperformance of the balance with a cold gas thruster isrn1μN/(Hz)~(1/2) in the frequency range [10~(-3) - 5 Hz] andrn0.1μN/(Hz)~(1/2) in the smaller frequency range [10~(-2) -rn2 Hz].