ONERA has been involved in the development and tests of electrical propulsion systems since the 60’s. Several technological bricks are being studied, including new concept of thruster technologies, intrusive and non-intrusive diagnostics, or numerical tools specific to the physics involved in electrical thrusters to ease the development of key technologies.
The ECRA propulsion system, under patent, has been developed in the 2010’s at ONERA and during the H2020 MINOTOR project in collaboration with seven other partners. Using microwaves, several test campaigns have shown great efficiency for a 30 W and 200 W versions of the thruster. Currently at TRL 4, the development of a prototype is still ongoing.
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| Left, the microwave electrical thruster, ECRA. Middle, the 30 W version. Right, the 200 W version | ||||