August 7, 2007: First plasma observed in the Diverging Cusped-Field Thruster (DCF)

In these images graduate student Dan Courtney shows the DCF thruster he built at the Space Propulsion Laboratory.

For the first time, a diverging-cusped field thruster has been successfully fired. This configuration has the potential to improve thruster lifetime by reducing the amount of wall erosion due to ion impingement. The pictures show tight plasma confinement inside the thruster chamber and the ionized exhaust in the form of a conically diverging shell.

Also evident from the pictures is the stream of plasma following a magnetic field line from the cathode (bright violet spot on top) to the chamber.