Snecma

Safran Aircraft Engines

Vaitua Leroi

Dominique Indersie

Frédéric Marchandise

Anthony Lorand

Stephan Zurbach

Vanessa Vial

Kevin Giboudeaux

A system for regulating the flow rate of a propellant fluid for an electrical thruster of a space vehicle, the vehicle including a tank of propellant fluid and a flow rate regulator connected to the outlet of said tank; the flow rate regulator including a heater element controlled by a computer and adapted to heat the propellant fluid and to modify its physical properties so as to vary the flow rate of propellant fluid leaving the tank; said system being characterized in that the computer also includes a plurality of empirical calibration curves that have been determined empirically for defining the flow rate of propellant fluid as a function of the magnitude of heating and as a function of environmental parameters, such that said computer also performs a function of determining the flow rate of the propellant fluid.

Flow regulating system for supplying propellant fluid to an electric thruster of a space vehicle

The invention relates to the field of Hall effect thrusters. The invention provides a Hall effect thruster having a discharge channel of annular shape extending along an axis, the discharge channel being defined by an outer wall of annular shape and an inner wall of annular shape situated inside the space defined by the outer wall, a cathode situated outside the discharge channel, and an injector system situated at the upstream end of the discharge channel and also forming an anode, the downstream end of the discharge channel being open, wherein the thruster includes a heat sink device comprising a heat sink in contact with the inner wall and of thermal conductivity that is greater than the thermal conductivity of the inner wall, the heat sink being a sleeve and the heat sink device being suitable for discharging heat from the inner wall to the outside of the thruster so as to reduce the temperature difference between the inner wall and the outer wall.

Hall effect thruster with cooling of the internal ceramic

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Strasbourg, France

Vaitua Leroi