Three papers have been discussed with the 37th IEPC attendees in Boston, in 2022.
The first one was on the characterization of an Hall Effect Thruster operated with a mixture of Oxygen and Nitrogen similar to that of a VLEO orbit around 200 km. One of the main issues in assessing air breathing systems is to test the concept on ground, with a suitable flow generator which shall be as representative as possible of atmospheric flow rates encountered by the spacecraft at VLEO. The AETHER team refined a particle flow generator (PFG) which relies on electric propulsion to accelerate a mixture of Oxygen and Nitrogen representative of what can be found at so low orbits. Results are described in this paper:
The second paper described another key component of the AETHER system: the RF cathode developed at University of Surrey (UK), and is downloadable from here:
The third one goes through a mission analysis for a RAM-EP satellite in VLEO, and can be downloaded from here:
