Statistical Characterization of Emitter Fabrication over Electrospray Array Thruster

What is it about?

Electrospray thrusters are electric rockets consisting of many hundreds or thousands of electric needles that emit ions beams for space propulsion. Variability from needle to needle can make these systems operate outside expectation and fail early. We analyze the geometry of over 500 of these needles to statistically characterize these emitters. We find that their geometry varies widely and predominately randomly across the array and discuss why this was the case for the fabrication method we used.

Featured Image