The X3 Nested-channel Hall Thruster (NHT), is a 100-kW class thruster developed jointly by the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL) at the University of Michigan, led by Alec ...

Chemical burn rockets can produce a lot of thrust, but only for a short period; this makes them ideal for lofting space vehicles out of Earth’s atmosphere and into outer space, but once they’ve ...

It was believed that Hall thrusters, an efficient kind of electric propulsion widely used in orbit, need to be large to produce a lot of thrust. Now, a new study suggests that smaller Hall thrusters ...

In a recent study presented at the AIAA SCITECH 2023 Forum, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) examined how a widely used electronic propulsion system in Earth orbit known as ...

Benjamin Jorns, U-M associate professor of aerospace engineering led a new Hall thruster study that operated a Hall Plasma thruster at five times old power limits. His team challenged ran a 9 kilowatt ...

A form of electric propulsion known as Hall thrusters — a type of ion thruster — may actually pack more bang for the buck than expected. Hall thrusters have conventionally been used to adjust the ...