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US 12,515,817 B2Granted
Micro-propulsion system
AssigneeThe George Washington University
InventorsMichael Keidar, Jonathan Kolbeck, Denis Zolotukhin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A thruster has a first stage and a second stage. The first stage is a plasma source that outputs a plasma. The second stage is an accelerator. In one embodiment, the second stage is a plasma accelerator that accelerates the plasma. In another embodiment, the second stage is an ion accelerator that accelerates the ions from the plasma.
Claims16
A thruster comprising:
- a plasma source having a plasma source distal end that emits plasma;
- an accelerator having an accelerator proximal end and an accelerator distal end, said accelerator proximal end aligned with and positioned near the plasma source distal end to receive the plasma and accelerate the plasma;
- a gap between the accelerator proximal end and the plasma source distal end;
- a magnet positioned about a distal end of said plasma source proximal end of said accelerator, and
- a power source providing a pulsed power signal to said magnet, said plasma source, said accelerator, a screen grid and an accelerator grid to reduce power consumption of said thruster.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.