METHOD OF PERFORMANCE EVALUATION FOR ION THRUSTER

Ion thruster is one of the propulsion.And it can provide propulsion for spacecraft.Thrust,specific impulse and efficiency are mainly performances of the ion thruster.In general,its performances are evaluated by the efficiency under the guaranteed its thrust and specific impulse.In this paper,by analysis the relations between the thrust,specific impulse,efficiency and the operation parameter of ion thruster,showed an evaluation method of the performance by operation parameter of ion thruster.And the performance was evaluated for 20 cm xenon ion thruster.The result was agreement both measurement and computation.