抄録
This paper deals with a combustion-controllable solid propellant microthruster using laser heating.
Conventional solid propellant thrusters, which require neither tank nor valve, have relatively high reliability
due to simpler structures. However, the solid propellant thrusters were not applied to attitude or
station keeping because of the difficulty in interrupt and restart of thrust production. Hence, the authors
proposed a new throttleable solid propellant microthruster using laser heating. The proposed thruster has
combustion-controllable solid propellant, combustion of which was sustained only while burning surface
is heated with a semiconductor laser; and then, combustion is started and interrupted by switching laser
heating. A 0.1 N class thruster was prototyped to evaluate performance, and heat flux balance under
combustion was evaluated.
