TY - JFULL AU - Takahiro Nakamura and Kenji Takahashi and Hiroyuki Nishida and Shunjiro Shinohara and Takeshi Matsuoka and Ikkoh Funaki and Takao Tanikawa and Tohru Hada PY - 2012/12/ TI - Direct Measurement of Electromagnetic Thrust of Electrodeless Helicon Plasma Thruster Using Magnetic Nozzle T2 - International Journal of Physical and Mathematical Sciences SP - 1497 EP - 1502 VL - 6 SN - 1307-6892 UR - https://publications.waset.org/pdf/5531 PU - World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology NX - Open Science Index 71, 2012 N2 - In order to realize long-lived electric propulsion systems, we have been investigating an electrodeless plasma thruster. In our concept, a helicon plasma is accelerated by the magnetic nozzle for the thrusts production. In addition, the electromagnetic thrust can be enhanced by the additional radio-frequency rotating electric field (REF) power in the magnetic nozzle. In this study, a direct measurement of the electromagnetic thrust and a probe measurement have been conducted using a laboratory model of the thruster under the condition without the REF power input. Fromthrust measurement, it is shown that the thruster produces a sub-milli-newton order electromagnetic thrust force without the additional REF power. The thrust force and the density jump are observed due to the discharge mode transition from the inductive coupled plasma to the helicon wave excited plasma. The thermal thrust is theoretically estimated, and the total thrust force, which is a sum of the electromagnetic and the thermal thrust force and specific impulse are calculated to be up to 650 μN (plasma production power of 400 W, Ar gas mass flow rate of 1.0 mg/s) and 210 s (plasma production power of 400 W, Ar gas mass flow rate of 0.2 mg/s), respectively. ER -