Design improvements and experimental measurements of BURFIT-80 RF ion thruster

Abstract

BURFIT-80, a prototype radio-frequency ion thruster, is designed, built and tested at the Bogazici University Space Technologies Laboratory. This paper presents the design parameters and numerous design improvements of this thruster. Three different versions of the thruster, with the same discharge chamber inner diameter of 80 mm, have been built and tested. The latest vesion of this prototype thruster presents significant improvements of the DC electrical connections to the grids and RF electrical connections to the RF antenna. For the second version of the thruster, plume ion energy distribution measurements are conduted using an indigenously developed retarding potential analyzer, and some of the measurement results are presented.