Products & ServicesSpace Propulsion SystemsFiber-Fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster (FPPT)

Solid Teflon Propellant

Engineers at CUA have developed a patented Fiber-fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster (FPPT) which consumes PTFE propellant from a spooled form. The thruster uses massive parallelism in its energy storage unit (ESU) design, assembling COTS components into discrete modular capacitor assemblies while maintaining low per-cap specific current levels. Discharge initiation is accomplished via a regenerative carbon igniter array located in the thruster cathode. A 1.7U system configuration with a 32 J ESU operating at 48 Watts (1.5 Hz) produces a thrust of 0.10 mN with a specific impulse of 3,500 s. Thruster performance can be varied with fuel feed rate if desired. A 1.7U design provides up to 28,000 N-s total impulse. Accelerated subsystem life testing demonstrated > 1.6 billion capacitor charge / discharge cycles with nearly identical specific current waveforms. FPPT utilizes the completely non-toxic solid propellant Teflon with benign exhaust, has no corrosive or propellant plugging issues, and has on-demand thrust with no warmup time requirement. Further, the ability to control both input power and propellant feed rate allows tuning from higher-Isp operation to higher-thrust operation. CUA believes that the FPPT technology is a compelling option to meet many micropropulsion needs including extended orbital maneuvers, deorbiting, deep-space missions.

Advantages include:

  • Simplicity and safety with solid inert Teflon propellant

  • Low-cost propulsion option

  • Propellant is spooled inside package and easily expanded as needed

  • No pressure vessel required for propellant

  • Compact package size as small as 1U

  • Well-suited for 6U or larger CubeSats

Propellant Options: Teflon fiber (range safety not required)

Status: Available as 1.7U dual fault tolerant unit w/ < 9-month lead time

Variations: CUA offers a ‘Quick-Turn’ Pulsed Plasma Thruster (QT-PPT) system at lower cost and shorter lead time. Alternate form factors available w/ additional cost and lead time.

FPPT is being integrated for flight on CUA’s NASA-funded Dual Propulsion Experiment (DUPLEX) CubeSat, presently manifested for launch in Q3 2022.

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Solid Teflon Propellant
Related Publications
C. A. Woodruff, M. Parta, D. M. King, R. L. Burton, and D. L. Carroll, “Fiber-fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster (FPPT) with Multi-axis Thrust Vectoring” 19 Jun. 2022, 37th International Electric Propulsion Conference Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA, Cambridge, MA, June 19-23, 2022, DOI n/a, (2022)
R. L. Burton, C. A. Woodruff, D. M. King, and D. L. Carroll, “Analysis of Fiber-Fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster Performance” 22 Oct. 2020, Journal of Propulsion and Power, vol 20, numb 20, 88-90, 92, DOI 1.B38114, (2020)
C. A. Woodruff, D. M. King, R. L. Burton, and D. L. Carroll, “Fiber-fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster (FPPT) for Small Satellites” 15 Sep. 2019, IEPC, Sep 2019, Vienna, Austria, September 15-20, 2019, No. 899, pp. 1-12, DOI n/a, (2019)
C. Woodruff, D. King, R. Burton, J. Bowman, and D. L. Carroll, “Development of a Fiber-Fed Pulsed Plasma Thruster for Small Satellites” 04 Aug. 2019, Small Satellite Conference, Logan, UT, Aug 4, 2019, DOI n/a, (2019)