Resources

Overview

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Figure 1, shows the overview of the lectures, tutorials and assessments that will be done throughout Semester 1. While every member, new or old, will have varying degrees of knowledge around these topics and softwares. We strongly insist on attendence and participation in all these activities and lessons. You have the opportunity to learn new things, meet peers and have fun!

Quizzes

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These quizzes are designed to assess your knowledge on the key concepts required to flourish in this society. Quiz 1 will assess your knowledge on Electro-Magnetism and the fundamentals of spacecraft propulsion. Quiz 2 will plasma physics and pulsed plasma thrusters (PPTs). Quiz 3 covers the knowledge needed to understand Chathodes and Hall Effect Thrusters (HETs). Finally Quiz 4 will cover the Magnetic Nozzle Thrusters and the basic principles of diagnostics. All quizzess can be attempted as many times as you wish and there is no time limit. Good Luck!

The thruster was unable to operate steadily, and so we were unable to acquire hard data points. Despite this, we can still infer certain aspects of its performance. Based on prior magnetic field tests, the magnetic field is lopsided, resulting in a non ideal field topology, since for optimum performance, the field should be mostly radial. This directly resulted in the plume being quite divergent, as shown in Figure 1, likely causing many ions to have significant non-axial components in their velocities and not contributing to the overall thrust of the engine. It can also be seen that the plasma appears very dense close to the exit plane of the thruster, indicating that most of the ionisation and acceleration is occurring closer to the exit plane, which could explain instabilities and poor performance.