Impact of Vacuum Facilities on Plasma Thruster Operation – Now Open for Submissions!

Submit to this Special Topic today View in Browser SUBMIT AN ARTICLE MANAGE MY ALERTS ABOUT THE JOURNAL Journal of Applied Physics Call for Papers Special Topic: Impact of Vacuum Facilities on Plasma Thruster Operation There has been significant investment by NASA, DoD, industry, and private investment to proliferate the flight of high-power electric propulsion (EP) systems. These systems ionize the propellant on the spacecraft and then use electrostatic or electromagnetic forces to accelerate the plasma to create thrust. The thrust is used to maneuver the spacecraft. Unfortunately, as the plasma thruster power level increases, state-of-the-art approaches to correlate ground-test results to in-flight performance and wear are insufficient for the operation of high-power EP devices. This stems from ground-based EP test facilities interacting with plasma thruster operation. The resultant ground-based thruster operation does not represent in-space performance or lifetime. These facility effects include elevated pressure from residual, inadequately pumped gas in the test facility, contaminants from the facility interacting with the thruster, and uncertain electrical paths through the thruster plume and the test facility walls. To enable the flight of high-power plasma thrusters requires a significant advance in our understanding of the fundamental and applied sciences underpinning the impact of background neutral gas on the physics of plasma acceleration, electrical circuits that include the plasma and the vacuum facility, plasma-material interactions, and detailed physics-based models of the plasma ionization, acceleration, and neutralization processes. This Special Topic presents work from the scientific and technical community that aims to quantify, understand, and predict the physical and chemical impact of ground-based vacuum facilities on plasma thruster operation. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: • Impact of vacuum chamber pressure on thruster • Impact of electrical configuration on thruster • Impact of chamber materials and configuration on the backsputter of materials onto the thruster • Technologies used to mitigate the impact of the vacuum chamber on thruster operation • Techniques to extrapolate performance parameters measured in ground-based vacuum facilities to the environment of space Guest Editors Mitchell L. R. Walker, Georgia Institute of Technology Ben Jorns, University of Michigan John Brophy, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Robert Thomas, NASA Glenn Research Center Stephane Mazouffre, French National Research Center (CNRS) Hans Leiter, Airbus Safran Launchers Ikkoh Funaki, JAXA- The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Submission Deadline: November 15, 2025 LEARN MORE > Tell Us What You Think! Did you like this email? Yes > No >  Follow us on social media   Copyright © 2025 AIP Publishing. All rights reserved. 1305 Walt Whitman Rd., Melville, NY 11747 You are receiving this email because you have opted-in to receive alerts from us. To guarantee delivery of this email please add journals@aip-info.org to your address book and safe senders list. If you no longer wish to receive emails from us then please unsubscribe or amend your settings. Privacy Policy