Mitchell L. R. Walker

TL;DR: This review examines the cutting edge and discusses the opportunities for integration of nanomaterials into the most advanced types of electric propulsion devices that take advantage of their unique features and boost their efficiency and service life.

TL;DR: The thrust stand design uses a conventional inverted pendulum to increase sensitivity, coupled with a null-type feature to eliminate thrust alignment error due to deflection of thrust, and incorporates an in situ calibration rig.

TL;DR: The accurate, direct measurement of thrust or impulse is one of the most critical elements of electric thruster characterization, and it is the most difficult measurement to make as mentioned in this paper, and therefore it is difficult to obtain accurate measurements.

TL;DR: In this article, standard practices, guidelines, and recommendations for experimental methods and analysis techniques that aim to standardize community practices, to mitigate test environment effects, and to reduce systematic measurement error in order to improve plume predictions in the space environment.

TL;DR: In this article, the effects of dissimilar probe design and facility backpressure on the measured ion current densities of Hall thrusters are investigated, and the results show that the GRC probe measured a greater ion current density than the JPL probe over the range of angular positions investigated for each operating condition.