Samuele Carere
Experimental Assessment of the Performance of an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Acceleration (ECRA) Thruster Operated with Iodine.
Rel. Guido Lombardi. Politecnico di Torino, Master of science program in Aerospace Engineering, 2025
Abstract
The growing demand for compact and efficient space propulsion systems has accelerated the development of alternative propellants and thruster technologies. Among these, iodine has emerged as a promising candidate for electric propulsion due to its high storage density, low ionization energy, and significantly lower cost compared to xenon. The work presented here was conducted during a six-month internship at the Physics Instrumentation and Space Department, in the Lightning, Plasmas, and Applications unit at ONERA center in Palaiseau, France. The aim of the study was to investigate the use of iodine in an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Acceleration (ECRA) thruster, originally designed and patented at ONERA for xenon use.
The internship was structured in three main phases
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