Development of a High Power, Magnetically Shielded, Dual Channel Hall Thruster in The Framework of the TANDEM Project

The paper deals with the activity jointly carried out by the University of Pisa (UniPi) and Aerospazio Tecnologie for the research and development of a high power (up to 25 kW) Hall thruster with a nested configuration (TANDEM project). The activity is currently carried out in the framework of the ESA Technology Research Program (TRP). The thruster has two coaxial channels with a magnetically shielded topology and a central hollow cathode. The nested configuration allows the thruster to effectively operate in a wide range of power, with xenon and krypton as propellant, by activating each single channel alone or together, at different level of voltage and current. To this regard, the cathode has been specifically designed to operate in a wide range of current with both the propellants. The thruster channels have been sized by extensively using the scaling tools developed at UniPi described later. These tools have also allowed to set the performance envelope of the thruster, used to establish the requirements of the experimental equipment and the preparation of the test plan. At the present stage, the thruster, including the cathode, has been designed in detail. Material procurement and manufacturing is in progress. Testing activity will be carried out in selected facilities at Aerospazio Tecnologie premise. A preliminary test of the cathode in a standalone configuration is foreseen during the first part of 2022. An extensive experimental campaign is then foreseen on the thruster, to measure the thrust, the electrical characteristic, and information about the external plasma with suitable diagnostics at different xenon and krypton mass flow rates.