Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) Development and Ground Testing in Support of PPT Flight Demonstrations on MightySat

The Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) Space Demonstration is a cooperative effort between the US Air Force, Phillips Laboratory and the NASA-Lewis Research Center. The purpose is to investigate the orbit-raising capability and overall performance of the PPT system on-board a spacecraft and to determine the effects of plume contamination from the thruster on spacecraft instruments. The PPT is scheduled for a January 2000 launch on the MightySat II.1 spacecraft. The MightySat program is managed from the Space Experiments directorate of Phillips Laboratory technology in a timely and cost-effective manner. The MightySat program office has selected the Orbital/Sub-Orbital Platform (OSP) as the launch vehicle for flight II.1, which has been named Sindri. While mission analysis shows that for OSP insertion at nominal solar flux conditions it is unnecessary to do any orbit raising to maintain a one year mission life for Sindri. The PPT design and testing effort, conducted jointly with NASA Lewis Research Center and Primex Aerospace Corporation, will continue to focus on the critical orbit raising mission from a Space Shuttle insertion orbit