Thrusters (spacecraft)

A thruster is a propulsive device used by spacecraft for station keeping, attitude control, in the reaction control system, or long-duration, low-thrust acceleration. A vernier engine or gimbal engine is a particular case used on launch vehicles where a secondary rocket or other high thrust device is used to control the attitude of the rocket while the primary thrust engine (generally also a rocket engine) is fixed to the rocket and supplies the principal amount of thrust. ^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Some devices that are use or proposed to use as thrusters are:

• Rocket engine, using exothermic chemical reactions of the propellant(s)
• Electrohydrodynamic thruster, using ionized air (only for use in an atmosphere)
• Electrostatic ion thruster, using high-voltage electrodes
• Ion thruster, using beams of ions accelerated electrically
• Hall effect thruster, a type of ion thruster
• Pulsed inductive thruster, a pulsed form of ion thruster
• Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster, electric propulsion using the Lorentz force
• Electrodeless plasma thruster, electric propulsion using ponderomotive force
• Pulsed plasma thruster, using current arced across a solid propellant
• RF resonant cavity thruster, an electromagnetic thruster using microwaves

See also

• Liquid Apogee Engine – A liquid-propellant rocket used as the primary propulsion device on geostationary orbit satellites.
• Apogee kick motor – A solid-fuel rocket used as the primary propulsion device to circularize satellites inserted into a transfer orbit.

References

Spacecraft propulsion
Chemical rockets	State Liquid-fuel rocket Solid-fuel rocket Hybrid rocket Propellants Liquid propellants Cryogenic Hypergolic Monopropellant Bipropellant Staged combustion cycle Expander cycle Gas-generator cycle Tap-off cycle Pressure-fed engine Pump-fed engine Electric pump-fed engine Tripropellant
Electrical thrusters	Electrostatic Colloid thruster Ion thruster Gridded Hall effect thruster Field-emission electric propulsion Ionocraft Electromagnetic Pulsed inductive thruster Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster Electrodeless plasma thruster VASIMR Electrothermal Pulsed plasma thruster Helicon Double Layer Thruster Arcjet rocket Resistojet rocket Other MagBeam High Power Electric Propulsion Mass driver Resonant cavity thruster
Nuclear propulsion	Closed system Nuclear electric rocket Nuclear thermal rocket Radioisotope Salt-water Gas core "Lightbulb" Open system Nuclear pulse propulsion Antimatter-catalyzed Pulsed nuclear thermal rocket‎ Fusion rocket Bussard ramjet Fission-fragment rocket Fission sail Nuclear photonic rocket
Other	Cold gas thruster Solar sail Electric sail Magnetic sail Beam-powered propulsion Solar thermal rocket Tethers Gravity assist Anti-gravity
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