Parametric investigations of a nonconventional Hall thruster

Hall thrusters might better scale to low power with nonconventional geometry. A 9 cm cylindrical, ceramic-channel, Hall thruster with a cusp-type magnetic field distribution has been investigated. It exhibits discharge characteristics similar to conventional coaxial Hall thrusters, but does not expose as much channel surface. Significantly, its operation is not accompanied by large amplitude discharge low frequency oscillations.