High Power Demonstration of a 100 kW Nested Hall Thruster System

Abstract

The XR-100 team successfully completed high power system testing of a Nested Hall Thruster system made up of the X3 Nested Hall Thruster, a modular Power Processing Unit, and a 5 valve Mass Flow Controller as the culmination of work performed under a NASA NextSTEP program. The test campaign attained several key firsts, including highest directly measured thrust of an electric propulsion (EP) string, highest demonstrated current of an EP string, and highest power operation of an EP string at thermal equilibrium published to date. Most importantly, the XR-100 system testing demonstrated that a 100 kW-class Nested Hall Thruster system has comparable performance and behavior to current state-of-the-art mid power Hall Thrusters, validating that the heritage technology can be scaled up to 100+ kW