Published By National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Issued about 9 years ago
Summary
Description
Scandate cathodes are proposed as a way to boost performance and life for electric space propulsion systems. This company has recently demonstrated breakthrough performance on these cathodes in other formats. We have demonstrated emission of 5 Amps/cm2 at 850 degrees CB, which is 200 degrees C below that of conventional cathodes. At this temperature they should live at least 100,000 hours. This makes scandate cathodes a candidate for use in deep space missions. In Phase I we propose construction and testing of several hollow scandate cathodes. We propose to do both vacuum and ion environment characterization on them. In Phase II we will begin active collaboration with NASA to test these cathodes in complete ion thrusters.