A 3.000 Hours Endurance Testing of RIT-22 Thruster in the New Aerospazio Test Facility

The following paper describes the test activities performed at AEROSPAZIO during a 3000 h endurance test carried out on the RIT-22 thruster. In particular, the paper describes the vacuum data and the beam diagnostics test results. The test activities were aimed at performing a continuous firing of the RIT thruster at the selected nominal operating point corresponding to 175 mN of thrust. Characterisation tests (Perveance, Electron Back Stream) were performed at selected operating times. Beam diagnostics was performed approximately each 100 h of thruster operation. The test activities were performed in the new Aerospazio large Vacuum Test Facility. The vacuum conditions were better than 6 x 10 -6 mbar during all thruster operations.