Development of Electric and Chemical Microthrusters

Table 3

Summary of FEEP thruster performance.

	Clustered FEEP	Multitip FEEP
No. of emitters	4–16	28
Propellant	In	In or Ga
Reservoir weight	15 g	>15 g∗
Curr./emitter	1–150 μA	Up to 3 mA
Voltage	3–7 kV	7–18 kV
Thrust/emitter	0.1–12 μN	0.1–350 μN
Thrust noise	<0.1 μN/√Hz	<0.1 μN/√Hz
Thrust Resolution	<0.1 μN	<0.1 μN
𝐼Sp^∗∗	4,000–6,000 s	6,000–8,000 s
Beam power/thrust∗∗	40–55 W/mN	60–85 W/mN
Beam divergence	<25°	<25°
Lifetime∗	20,000 h	10,000 h

∗Can be enlarged to customer specification.
∗∗Varying over the current-voltage characteristic.