Abstract: Hall thruster is a type of electric propulsion thruster which is often regarded as a moderate specific impulse space propulsion technology and is used primarily for station keeping and orbit maintenance tasks. Magnetic field is the most important aspect in Hall thruster’s design. Each time the performance improvement of Hall thrusters is accompanied with the regeneration of magnetic field design. Now, all the major space nations treat the magnetic field design as the key technology for Hall thrusters, and many Hall thrusters have emerged in recent years, for example, BPT-4000 and NASA-173M. In China, based on magnetic focus technology, the Beijing Institute of Control Engineering (BICE) has been developing Hall thrusters ranged from hundreds of watts to 5 kilowatts, including the 1500 W HEP-100MF and the 5 kW HEP-140MF Hall thrusters. This paper briefly reviews the development of the HEP-XXMF series Hall thruster. The principle of the Hall thruster, the design methods and the current status of HEP-100MF and HEP-140MF are discussed in the paper.

Key words: Hall thruster, Electric propulsion