Emmanuelle Rosati Azevedo

Imperial College London / URA Thrusters Ltd.

Having identified the potential of water as a breakthrough propellant for electric propulsion, URA Thrusters and Imperial College London present the preliminary design of a 2-kW level water vapor fueled Hall Effect thruster: the AQUAHET. The design of this new thruster builds on the lessons learnt from the development at Imperial of an analogous ox...

AVS UK has designed and built two new updated laboratory model ECR thrusters in partnership with the University of Surrey, STFC ISIS, Viper RF, and Surrey Satellites Technology Ltd. Preliminary xenon performance characterization of these thrusters was carried out for different discharge chamber geometries at the electric propulsion facility of the...

The quad confinement plasma source is a novel plasma device developed for space propulsion applications, whose core is an E×B discharge with open electron drift. The magnetic field is produced by independently powered electromagnets able to generate different magnetic field topologies with the ultimate aim of manipulating the ion flow field for ach...

This study presents the first experimental demonstration of a Hall Effect Thruster operating with water electrolysis-derived constituents: oxygen for the anode (thruster) and hydrogen for the cathode, both from pressurised bottles. In contrast to prior research where the thruster was operated with oxygen to the anode and xenon/krypton to the cathod...

A UK-Austrian consortium led by AVS UK in collaboration with the University of Southampton (UoS) and RHP Technology is developing a low power porous electrospray propulsion system. Using as a baseline a thruster previously developed at UoS, the updated system design focuses on achieving higher thrust using processes suitable for high volume product...

In this paper, data will be presented on the potential design and performance of a novel water-fuelled Hall effect thruster (HET) named AQUAHET using high fidelity particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Hall effect thrusters are one of the leading in-space propulsion technologies. The potential for electric propulsion as a means for exploring deep-spa...

IMPULSE, the Integrated Microwave Propulsion Architecture for Telecommunication Satellites, is a new, all-electric propulsion system, operating from a common microwave PPU and common Xenon FCU. It consists of X-EPT, a Gridded Ion Engine (GIE) for primary propulsion and XMET, a Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET) for attitude control. Preliminar...

AVS UK has designed, built, and tested a torsional thrust balance system with wireless radio frequency (RF) power transfer at the electric propulsion lab at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC). Following integration, and characterisation tests such as wireless power transfer efficiency, and thermal drift, it was used for the main test campaign of AQUAJET...

The Quad Confinement Thruster (QCT) is a promising novel electromagnetic device designed for low power Electric Propulsion (EP). While the QCT presents certain advantages over alternative commercially available technologies, such as the ability to vector thrust, it has showcased poor thrust efficiency. Ion velocity measurements taken in the thruste...

A hanging pendulum thrust balance has been developed by Imperial College London in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) to characterize a wide range of static fire electric propulsion and chemical micro-propulsion devices with thrust in the range of 1 mN to 1 N. The thrusters under investigation are mounted on a pendulum platform, whi...

The AQUAJET propulsion system is currently under investigation and development within Surrey Space Centre, at the University of Surrey, in a collaboration with AVS UK Ltd., STFC, and SSTL, to address the growing market need for low-cost, low-power propulsion for small communication satellites and constellations. The propulsion system is based on el...

Electrodeless plasma thrusters, and in particular Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) thrusters, are attracting an increasing amount of commercial and academic interest by virtue of their ability to function without a neutralizer. This opens the door to operation with a wide range of alternative propellants all the while ensuring mitigation of some...

The following report details the contribution of EMS to the completion of a thesis submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Advanced Aeronautical Engineering of Imperial College London. EMS was central to this project and was first used to model the 3D magnetic field of the thruster studied, the Quad C...