A thrust balance for low power hollow cathode thrusters

A hanging thrust balance has been designed, manufactured and tested at the University of Southampton. The current design allows for direct steady thrust measurements ranging from 0.1 mN to 3 mN but this can be easily extended to measure thrust in a different range. Moreover the chosen balance design and the thrust measurement procedure allow for the cancellation of thermal drifts. The thrust balance was tested with a T6 hollow cathode thruster providing measurements with an uncertainty of about 9.7%. The thrust data were compared to those obtained with another direct thrust balance, and they are in quantitative agreement being the maximum difference only 6%