{"id":143714,"date":"2022-08-07T02:26:03","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T07:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/hall-effect-thruster-utilizing-bismuth-as-propellant"},"modified":"2022-08-07T02:26:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-07T07:26:03","slug":"hall-effect-thruster-utilizing-bismuth-as-propellant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/hall-effect-thruster-utilizing-bismuth-as-propellant","title":{"rendered":"Hall-Effect Thruster Utilizing Bismuth as Propellant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hall-effect-thruster-utilizing-bismuth-as-propellant.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Circa 2008<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Marshall Space Flight Center.<\/p>\n<p>A laboratory-model Hall-effect spacecraft thruster was developed that utilizes bismuth as the propellant. Xenon was used in most prior Hall-effect thrusters. Bismuth is an attractive alternative because it has a larger atomic mass, a larger electron-impact-ionization cross-section, and is cheaper and more plentiful.<\/p>\n<p>The design of this thruster includes multiple temperature-control zones and other features that reduce parasitic power losses. Liquid bismuth (which melts at a temperature of 271\u00b0C) is supplied by a temperature-controlled reservoir to a vaporizer. The vaporizer exhausts to an anode\/gas distributor inside a discharge channel that consists of a metal chamber upstream of ceramic exit rings. In the channel, bismuth ions are produced through an electron impact ionization process and accelerated as in other Hall-effect thrusters. The discharge region is heated by the discharge and an auxiliary anode heater, which is required to prevent bismuth condensation at low power levels and at thruster start-up. A xenon discharge is also used for preheating the discharge channel, but an anode heater could provide enough power to start the bismuth discharge directly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Circa 2008 Marshall Space Flight Center. A laboratory-model Hall-effect spacecraft thruster was developed that utilizes bismuth as the propellant. Xenon was used in most prior Hall-effect thrusters. Bismuth is an attractive alternative because it has a larger atomic mass, a larger electron-impact-ionization cross-section, and is cheaper and more plentiful. The design of this thruster includes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}