Overview of Hollow Cathodes Development at Sitael

The use of electric propulsion systems is growing for scientific and commercial space missions. The advantage connected to such propulsive elements includes a lower propellant mass required to reach a specific delta-v, allowing for a higher payload mass and lower launching cost. Sitael is developing Hall thrusters with discharge power from 100 W to 20 kW, to be applicable to a wide range of missions. Four hollow cathodes are being produced to be coupled with the mentioned Hall thrusters. An in-house model was conceived as designing tool for the hollow cathodes, to define the main cathode geometrical parameters as well as performance parameters. The cathodes sustained dedicated experimental campaigns to assess their operative behavior in stand-alone configuration and coupled with the respective thruster. The experimental results will be presented, with particular emphasis on the cathode behavior within the thruster unit.