Electric Propulsion Activities at DICI-Unipi

The paper illustrates the main theoretical and experimental activities currently carried out by the electric propulsion research team of the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering of the University of Pisa. The team is involved in the H2020 ASPIRE project for the development of unsteady 1 D fluid models for studying instabilities and performance in Hall thrusters and the development of 2D fluid models for hollow cathode performance studies. The ESA TDE TANDEM project is also in progress, with the aim of developing a 20 kW class Hall Thruster (cathode included) with coaxial channels and a magnetically shielded topology. Efforts are also spent in research and development of hollow cathodes with different emitter materials, operating with xenon, krypton, iodine and hydrogen for EP end nuclear fusion applications. In collaboration with the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry of the same university, research on iodine propellant management systems for low power thrusters is going ahead, including an innovative laser-based mass flow meter. More recently, the team has started a research activity on rapid prototyping by using additive manufacturing techniques applied to EP components.