Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in a running Hall Effect Thruster for space propulsion

Hall Effect Thrusters (HETs) are promising electric propulsion devices for the station-keeping of geostationary satellites and for interplanetary missions. The main limiting factor of the HET lifetime is the erosion of the annular channel ceramic walls. Erosion monitoring has been performed in the laboratory using optical emission spectroscopy (OES) measurements and data treatment based on the coronal model and the actinometric hypothesis. This study uses laser ablation of the ceramic wall in a running HET in order to introduce controlled amounts of sputtered material in the thruster plasma. The transient laser-induced breakdown plasma expands orthogonally in a steady-state plasma jet created by the HET discharge. The proposed spectroscopic method involves species from both plasmas (B, Xe, Xe+). The optical emission signal is correlated to the ablated volume (measured by profilometry) leading to the first direct validation of the actinometric hypothesis in this frame and opening the road for calibration of in-fiight erosion monitoring based on the OES method. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.