1,000-hours Demonstration of a 6-kW-class Hall Thruster for All-Electric Propulsion Satellite

A 1,000-hours preliminary life test of a 6-kW-class xenon Hall thruster for Engineering Test Satellite-9 (ETS-9) was conducted by using a bread board model thruster. Thrust degraded by approximately 2% before and after the test, which is mainly attributed to erosion and contamination of discharge channel made of boron nitride. The thruster was disassembled at an accumulated operational time of 652 hours to find 2.3-mm erosion at the channel's downstream surfaces. From 652 to 1,012 hours, low erosion rates about 10 μm/khr were found for the channel and the cathode; exception was found in the case of the insert, whose erosion rate was relatively high as 60 μm/khr. Thruster's estimated lifetime extrapolated from the test is more than 10,000 hours, which is satisfactory for all-electric propulsion satellites.