Evolution of Hall Thruster Technology toward Future Space Exploration

This paper provides a brief overview of Hall thruster R&Ds toward exploration worldwide and efforts for a highly fuel-efficient Hall thruster. The development goal is to expand the Hall thruster technology for all-electric propulsion geostationary satellites that operate at a few operational points toward high specific impulse and wide power ranges. These characteristics are important, particularly for space exploration. Until now, laboratory model thrusters and power processing units have been fabricated and tested using 6-kW-class thrusters; also, extremely high-voltage Hall thrusters above 3000-second specific impulse are experimentally investigated.