Abstract: Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) is the earliest electric thruster used for space missions. Among them, the Ablative Z-pinch Pulsed Plasma Thruster (AZPPT) can achieve high thrust to power ratio and specific impulse at a low volume and power due to its special front back coaxial configuration and anode spike. The effects of anode spike length, charging voltage, and discharge frequency on the performance of AZPPT was studied in this paper. The experiment showed that with the increase of charging voltage, the peak discharge current of the thruster, the electron temperature of the plume plasma, and the impulse bit increased, proving that the wide range adjustment of thrust can be achieved by changing the voltage. When the height of the anode spike increases, the impulse bit of the thruster decreases slightly, while the specific impulse increases significantly. Compared to the performance of thruster without the spike, the specific impulse increases by 23.7%, and the overall efficiency increases by 7.31%, indicating that anode spike can optimize the thrust performance of low power AZPPT significantly. Based on the above results, a 1 U miniaturized and modular propulsion system has been developed. The ignition of the propulsion system was successful, and the impulse bit reached 193.72 μN·s under a discharge energy of 5 J. It has the characteristics of low power, good overall performance, and compact structure.

Key words: pulse plasma thruster, Z-pinch, power processing unit, micro thrust measurement