Development of a 10 mN Class Hall Thruster for Small Satellites in Korea

A compact Hall thruster with a thrust of about 10 mN and a specific impulse of about 1500 s is under development for the purpose of controlling or maintaining the orbits of small satellites. The thruster system consists of a Hall thruster head unit, a power processing unit, and a xenon gas feed unit. The target values of the total mass, consumed electrical power, and thrust efficiency of the thruster system are approximately $<$ 5 kg, $<$ 300 W and $>$ 30 {\%}, respectively. Laboratory examination of the thruster performance finds that the thruster meets the design specification. The parametric study of the thruster operation is on-going in order to find optimal operation conditions. The developed thruster is scheduled to be implemented on the STSAT-3 in the year 2010.