Hall thrusters

The workhorse of commercial electric propulsion: how it works and where it is used.

Scope

• Crossed-field discharge and ion acceleration
• Performance envelope against gridded ion engines
• Erosion, lifetime and magnetic shielding
• Use in station keeping and orbit raising

Notes

Nothing written here yet. Working notes go in Research and Learning Lab; anything that becomes durable is promoted onto this page.

References

To be added as the topic is worked through.