Abstract
The teflon pulsed plasma microthruster is a kind of electrical thruster and generates cicrothrust pulsatively by using a solid teflon as a propellant. The teflon thruster presented here is the inflight model developed for the operation in the space emviroment. This note reports on the impulse bit measurement of the teflon thruster in the ground. We applied the physical pendulum to the thrust stand and operated the thruster pulsatively once in a cycle when the pendulum passed through the lowest point. A light beem, which was thrown from the outside of vacuum chamber, was reflected on the mirror settled at the fulcrum of pendulum and was recorded on the photo-sensitive paper moving at the constant rate. Each microimpulse bit was integrated during a certain time and the average impulse bit was obtained from the amplitude of pendulum as the function of the discharge energy and the voltage applied to the thruster.
