Design and testing of low-cost miniature ion thruster for nanosatellites

Ion propulsion is a technology that offers low thrust but high specific impulse for small spacecraft. The propulsion system can be used for attitude control and deep-space missions. A disadvantage ion thrusters have is the high cost of the propellant. Xenon is a widely used propellant for ion thrusters; however, it is expensive. In addition, the manufacturing of the ion thruster can be costly. This paper presents a low-cost ion thruster that uses nitrogen and argon as its propellant. The thruster is named capacitive discharge ion thruster (CDIT) because the plasma is generated by a capacitive discharge. The force, specific impulse, mass efficiency, power efficiency, and thrust efficiency of the CDIT using nitrogen is 0.564 mN, 2 300 s, 0.44, 0.75, and 0.34, respectively, at a mass flow rate of 25 µg/s.