Development of a micro pulsed plasma thruster for CubeSat Attitude Control

Abstract

This paper presents the first steps towards the design of an optimized ablative pulsed plasma thruster for 3U CubeSats. Motivated by the need for onboard propulsion for attitude control and orbit maintenance, the proposed system leverages low-cost, commercially available off-the-shelf components to facilitate replication in academic settings. The thruster uses a parallel-plate electrode geometry with a 15–20◦ flare angle to maximize inductance variation during the discharge. Energy storage is provided by a polypropylene film capacitor bank delivering approximately 4.5 J per pulse, while a microcontroller synchronizes the charge and firing cycles. Once the micro-pulsed plasma thruster assembly is completed, experimental validation will be conducted in a vacuum chamber, using a high-sensitivity piezoelectric impulse gauge to measure impulse bit and a precision balance to quantify propellant mass consumption. The empirical results will be contrasted with magnetohydrodynamic simulations to improve the understanding of low-energy plasma physics. This development targets a thrust efficiency above 10%.