High Power Electric Propulsion (HPEP)

The XR-100 team successfully completed high power system testing of a Nested Hall Thruster system made up of the X3 Nested Hall Thruster, a modular Power Processing Unit, and a 5 valve Mass Flow Controller as the culmination of work performed under a NASA NextSTEP program. The test campaign attained several key firsts, including highest directly measured thrust of an electric propulsion (EP) string, highest demonstrated current of an EP string, and highest power operation of an EP string at thermal equilibrium published to date. Most importantly, the XR-100 system testing demonstrated that a 100 kW-class Nested Hall Thruster system has comparable performance and behavior to current state-of-the-art mid power Hall Thrusters, validating that the heritage technology can be scaled up to 100+ kW class. In addition to the accomplishments and system demonstration, design improvements for future development and testing are discussed.

The goal of the program was to advance the XR-100 to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5, establishing the viability of the technology at the 100-kW class. This was to be demonstrated in a program-culminating test campaign with the objective of operating the propulsion system at 100 kW for 100 continuous hours. The central goals driving these quantitative metrics were to 1) demonstrate the technology can achieve high power as a system, 2) can achieve thermal steady state, and 3) can maintain stable operation beyond thermal equilibrium. Many propulsion technologies work well at low TRLs as a thruster alone or for short durations, but issues with the underlying physics become more apparent at full power, at the system level, and for extended durations up to and beyond thermal equilibrium. By exercising the system in this way, the NextSTEP program could evaluate whether the high power capability has fundamental limitations or if further technology maturation is feasible.

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