This project proposal was submitted on March 8, 2013 and the announcement for the awardees were made on July 12, 2013. This project officially began on October 1, 2013. It has a duration of 3 years with a total budget of 440k TL including the payment for the department and PTI.

This project will consist of experimental and theoretical (modeling) parts. In the experimental part of the project, a prototype radio-frequency ion engine will be designed, manufactured and preliminary performance tests will be carried out. The prototype ion engine that will be produced as part of this project is expected to have a cylindrical discharge chamber of 72mm in diameter and 70mm in length. Due to the fact that the produced ion engine will only be a laboratory prototype, initially the grids with 91 and 127 holes packed in a hexagonal shape are going to be manufactured and the necessary tests will be performed. During the design phase different materials and production methods will also be investigated. The design and the manufacturing of the prototype ion engine will benefit from the studies and designs of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the research conducted under the partnership of University of Giessen and EADS Astrium in Germany. The targeted thrust value of the prototype ion engine is in the range of 2-4 mN. In order to achive this thrust, the propellant flow rate, the grid spacing, and the discharge potential values will be adjusted. Other desired parametric studies will be conducted.

In the theoretical part of the project, the ionization chamber of the radio-frequency ion engine will be modeled. In radio-frequency ion engines, the ionization of the neutral propellant gas is achieved by an antenna wrapped around the ionization chamber. The working principle behind the ionization of the neutral propellant gas using the energy transmitted to the plasma by radio frequency waves will be studied. Modeling of the ionization chamber plasma of an RF ion engine is related to an important research topic called the inductively coupled plasma (ICP). With the numerical model that will be developed as part of this research, an important step towards the understanding of the working principle of an RF ion engine will be made. The developed model will also be used in the design phase as well as the analysis of the test results of the prototype thruster.

As part of this project it will be possible to employ 3 graduate and 1 undergraduate students. Graduate students (Mert Satir, Nazli Turan and Yavuz Emre Kamis) and undergraduate stunent (Yigit Can Sezgin) are being paid through this project’s budget. However, the work conducted by Emre Turkoz had been directly related to the promised work in this project. Emre Turkoz has been an unpaid graduate student in tbis project.