Thrusters (spacecraft)
A thruster is a spacecraft propulsion device used for orbital station-keeping, attitude control, or long-duration, low-thrust acceleration, often as part of a reaction control system. A vernier thruster or gimbaled engine are particular cases used on launch vehicles where a secondary rocket engine or other high thrust device is used to control the attitude of the rocket, while the primary thrust engine is fixed to the rocket and supplies the principal amount of thrust.
Some devices that are used or proposed for use as thrusters are:
- Cold gas thruster
- Electrohydrodynamic thruster, using ionized air
- Electrodeless plasma thruster, electric propulsion using ponderomotive force
- Electrostatic ion thruster, using high-voltage electrodes
- Hall effect thruster, a type of ion thruster
- Ion thruster, using beams of ions accelerated electrically
- Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, electric propulsion using the Lorentz force
- Pulsed inductive thruster, a pulsed form of ion thruster
- Pulsed plasma thruster, using current arced across a solid propellant
- RF resonant cavity thruster, an electromagnetic thruster using microwaves