Miniature thruster in ESA s Propulsion Lab for tests

The TDE is currently funding five activities on  innovative propulsion for CubeSats. One of these activites with the University of Southampton, UK, is building the ALl-printed electric Propulsion System (ALPS) based on the novel concept of printed Cathode Arc Thruster (pCAT).As part of the activity, three cathodes for the thruster head have been produced. Two have been fully machined while one has been fully printed the final goal is to print the entire propulsion system.

Over the past week these three cathodes have been being tested at the ESA Electric ESTEC Propulsion Laboratory to investigate the performance of the one printed built thruster head, two machined built thruster heads, one built out of aluminium and one with a copper cathode. These are the same thruster heads which will fly on an In Orbit Demonstration this year on the Magdrive-led CubeSat mission.

The team are interested in comparing ground and space data. There will also be tests of a breadboard PPU with printed capacitor and resistors.

This is the 3rd test being  run at the Electric Propulsion Laboratory of the TDE innovative propulsion for Cubesats activities. Tests have already been conducted on the IFM Nano AR3 indium FEEP system with thrust vectoring from Enpulsion in December and the E-REGULUS system from T4i in February.