Abstract
A high-power ion thruster IT-500 was designed, manufactured and tested at Keldysh Research Center within a transport-power module project. This module is being designed to perform near-Earth space and interplanetary transport missions. In its nominal operation mode, IT-500 provides thrust in the range from 375 to 750 mN at specific impulse of 70 000 m/s and thrust efficiency of 0.75. Due to a high cost of the experimental testing of a large thruster, the emphasis was placed on the numerical optimization of the thruster design. The thruster completed performance tests and a 300 h wear test. The output characteristics of the thruster, obtained during the tests, confirmed the correctness of the provisional numerical optimization. IT-500 design, performance, and validation of the design approaches are discussed in this paper.
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Contribution to the Topical Issue: “Physics of Ion Beam Sources”, edited by Holger Kersten and Horst Neumann.
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Koroteev, A.S., Lovtsov, A.S., Muravlev, V.A. et al. Development of ion thruster IT-500. Eur. Phys. J. D 71, 120 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2017-70644-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2017-70644-6