Field Emission Electric Propulsion. Industrial Development of Emitters Modules, Phase 1B

摘要

The best outgassing procedure and surface wetting treatment of a field emission electric propulsion system were defined in tests. Results confirm that vacuum outgassing with high conductance is the only viable method. The fact that same emitters were used in two series of tests shows the ruggedness of the devices. The clustering tests were successfully accomplished, showing the possibility to operate only one emitter, and showing the adding of currents and the superimposition of each beamlet. This means that no beam interaction occurs. During these tests the beam divergence and V-I characteristics were very close to the ones obtained at ESTEC with measured efficiencies of 50% to 80%. Although mass consumption was not exactly measured, it is concluded that efficiency was also very high during clustering test.