Performance Validation and Plume Divergence of the CAM200 Low Power Hall Thruster

摘要

CAM200 is a low power Hall thruster operating in the 100-250 W power range. We present two recent activities in the development of the CAM200 Hall thruster-performance validation in an independent facility and measurement of the ion flux in the thruster plume. We show that the thruster performance, measured throughout six different operation points, is in line with the performance recorded at the Technion in past experiments (At 250W: Thrust of 13.9±0.6 mN, Isp of 1570±73 sec and efficiency of 43±3.7%). We also present ion flux curves for each operation point and show that the beam divergence angle is less than 40° for discharge power of 160W and higher.