High Power High Thrust Ion Thruster (HPHTion)

Motivation

• To develop a 25 kW thruster that would support NASA cargo propulsion requirements with power levels extending from 30 kW to 300 kW.

Approach

• The HPHTion would operate as a single high powered engine, thus reducing the system complexity by reducing engine count required to process the power.
• The engine operates at high thrust to power (~50mN/kW) and has the added bonus of a long lifetime.

Results

• EDA completed a thruster prototype during a Phase II effort and demonstrated beam extraction of this large Gridded Ion thruster