Thruster Control & Drive Electronics for Spacecraft

Customer: various thrusters developers under institutional R&D

Year: 1997 (RMT Project) – ongoing (HPP Projects)

Main features (RMT): 120W RF power at 150MHz with self-adjusting frequency to track the resonance of the Xenon heating cavity

Main features (HPP):

Anode, up to 250 Watt, with remote setup of operating voltage in the range 100÷350 Vdc in steps of 1.5 Vdc, <200 mV ripple, <2 ms transient recovery time; efficiency 79%

Trim Coil, up to 10 Watt on a 0.16 Ω load, for magnetic field intensity control, with:

  • remote setup of operating current (and with separate ground reference);
  • Heater, up to 25W, with remote setup of operating current in steps of 100 mA;

Ignitor (150 Vdc) / Keeper (22÷24 Vdc), up to 30W

  • Remote setup of keeper
  • Remote ignitor commands
  • System consists of one Control Module and up to 8 Power Modules
  • Power modules 1+1 hot redundancy by OR-diode cabling of output connections

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