Cathodic Arc Discharges for Spacecraft Propulsion and Other Aerospace Applications

Igal Kronhaus, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel

The introduction of nanosatellites class missions, using spacecraft with mass below 10 kg, significantly reduces cost and development time of Earth observation missions. These missions usually utilize several spacecraft that operate in a formation. To maintain the formation a propulsion system is typically required. However, the very limited resources on board a nanosatellite, with respect to mass, volume, and power budgets, make conventional propulsion solutions unsuitable.

An active research and development effort in the field of electric micropropulsion is being carried out at the Aerospace Plasma Laboratory (APL), Technion. A promising long lived, very low power, low mass and volume propulsion system is being developed, based on the properties of the cathodic arc discharge. The vacuum arc thruster technology will be discussed as well as recently obtained results.

The cathodic arc discharge utility to function as a plasma actuator is also investigated in APL. When operating the discharge in air, high velocity directed jets are obtained that could be useful for active manipulation of high speed flows. Experimental as well as CFD modeling results will be presented.