Far field modeling of the plasma plume of a Hall thruster

Hall thrusters are an attractive form of electric propulsion that are being developed and implemented to replace chemical systems for many in orbit propulsion tasks on communications satellites. One concern in the use of these devices is the possible damage their plumes may cause to the host spacecraft. Computer models of Hall thruster plumes play an important role in integration of these devices onto spacecraft as the space environment is not easily reproduced in ground testing facilities. In this article, a hybrid particle-fluid model of a Hall thruster plume is applied to model the SPT-100 thrusters used on the Russian Express satellites. The emphasis of the article is on making assessment of the model through direct comparison with measurements of ion current density and ion energy distributions taken on board Express spacecraft. A model for simulating atom–ion collisions is described. The sensitivity of the plume simulation results to various aspects of the physical modeling is investigated. The plume model is able to predict many of the most important characteristics of the measured data.