Structural Design and Performance Analysis of α Particle Micro-thruster

¹ Beijing Institute of Spacecraft Environment Engineering, 100094 Beijing, China
² Science and Technology on Reliability and Environmental Engineering Laboratory, 100094 Beijing, China
³ Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, 710024 Xi’an, China
⁴ Beihang University, 100083 Beijing, China

^* Corresponding author: xiayan_cast@163.com

Abstract

The α particle propelling is a technology under developing by the author’s research group, which uses α decay isotopes emitting high-speed particles to generate thrust. In this paper we mainly designed the thrust magnitude control and vector control structure suitable for this propelling principle and preliminarily analyzed its control performance. The proposed structure mounts the trust film composed of the decay nuclides onto a quasi-spherical frame surface that is conducive to vector synthesis. The traveling wave type ultrasonic motor drives the diaphragm to control the thrust magnitude of each thrust unit independently and efficiently. The vector control of the joint thrust is implemented by taking advantage of the diversity of combination of multiple thrust units. Theoretical calculation and analysis showed that the thruster structure could achieve the thrust magnitude control accuracy of 0.05µN, and the thrust angle control accuracy of 0.5-1.5 degrees.