NUMERICAL STUDY ON MECHANISM OF ORBITAL PARALLEL GRIDS THRUSTER

Equipment affiliated to Leo spacecraft can be used to accelerate the plasma naturally existed in space and then acquire thrust.A basic scheme about this idea is to put two grids supplied with different electric potentials to create an acceleration region for plasma on the orbit.We simulate the motion of ambient rare plasmas in accelerating grids by two dimensional PIC method.The simulation results show that the ions first have been accelerated by the electron field between the grids and then would be decelerated by the electron field between the back grid and the plasma sheath，which means the ions would not be accelerated in the whole process.The problem would be solved if an ion potential raising region was added in front of the grids.