Author : Sanket Pacharne

We know that Rocket is a device which moves on thrust provided by accelerating fuel &oxidizers which is nothing but the propellant and exhausting it from the nozzle of the rocket. But in plasma propulsion ,ionized gas is used to produce thrust. plasma contain charged particles, whose motion is strongly affected due to electric and magnetic fields, so with the application of electric or electromagnetic fields to plasma, it can accelerate its constituents and forward them to the back of rocket to produce the required thrust.The necessary fields can be generated by using magnets and electrode, or by passing electric currents through the plasma.

Keywords: Propulsion, ion thruster, Hall effect, lorrentz force, MPDT, VASIMR