Review of worldwide activities in liquid-fed pulsed plasma thruster

A review of worldwide activities in liquid-fed pulsed plasma thruster (LPPT) is discussed. Pulsed plasma thruster are extensively recognized as one of the most promising electric space propulsion systems to perform propulsive tasks on micro- and nanosatellites, including cubesats, because they offer many advantages compared with other electric space propulsion systems. The low plasma exhaust velocity measured by a Langmuir probe showed that thrust is mainly produced by 0.3 μg mass ionized by the first trigger and a much greater quantity of propellant introduced by the main discharge remained neutral at low speed. Various propellant feeding and discharge initiation methods have been applied during development of different LPPT models, important with regard to improvement of propellant utilization efficiency and determination of thruster lifetime. Numerical simulation of ablation and acceleration processes in LPPTs is of interest, but requires strong improvements and a substantial verification process to be established.