Gridded Ion Thruster Mission Life Prediction through Reduced Order Modeling

Gridded Ion Thruster Mission Life Prediction through Reduced Order Modeling | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Gridded Ion Thruster Mission Life Prediction through Reduced Order Modeling Richard A. Obenchain, Richard E. Wirz This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7802308/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract High power electric propulsion space missions require vacuum facility ground tests to predict in-space life and performance. Gridded ion thruster (GIT) mission life prediction must account for facility effects such as facility induced neutral and sputterant flux, which affect thruster performance and grid erosion, which can obfuscate predictions of grid transparency and electron backstreaming. This work demonstrates a simple GIT Predictive Engineer Model (GIT PEM) that captures these coupled effects. The model uses experimental and computational data from NASA’s NSTAR thruster, though any GIT could be used. The GIT PEM is exercised for key aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties, including those related to life threshold, model estimations, relevant physics, thruster operating conditions, and mission scenarios to characterize model sensitivities and uncertainty quantification. Results show that different life mechanisms dominate depending on imposed assumptions, examined factors, and uncertainties. For example, the most common life mechanism for ion thrusters, electron backstreaming, can exhibit high uncertainty for simplified approximations and is strongly influenced by facility-related uncertainties such as charge exchange collisions and sputter deposition. predictive model electric propulsion ion thruster uncertainty Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7802308","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":535643410,"identity":"42de87b1-e73a-4dc2-8b4e-624d2ea2413f","order_by":0,"name":"Richard A. Obenchain","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Oregon State University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Richard","middleName":"A.","lastName":"Obenchain","suffix":""},{"id":535643411,"identity":"6297415c-650a-4c2d-a52c-21f8f8f29a30","order_by":1,"name":"Richard E. 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