BHT-600
Busek Co.
The BHT-600 is a high-performance, long-life Hall Effect thruster designed for small satellites, offering primary propulsion and attitude control with options for direct mount or 1-axis/2-axis gimballing.
Key figurescomparable across the catalogue
- Power
- 600 W
- Thrust
- 0.039 N
- Specific impulse
- 1,500 s
- Total impulse
- 0.002 N·s
- Design life
- 0.798 years
Normalised to common units so this product can be compared with others in its category. The supplier's own wording is below.
As published by the supplier
- Nominal discharge power
- 600 W
- Discharge power range
- 300-800 W
- Thrust
- 39 mN (Xe)
- Propellants
- Xenon, Krypton, Iodine
- Specific impulse
- Up to 1500 seconds
- Demonstrated impulse
- 1.0 MN⋅s
- Predicted total impulse
- >1.5 MN⋅s
- Life tested
- >7000 hours
About
The BHT-600 is a mature, high-performance, and long-life propulsion system specifically designed for small satellites, including ESPA-class spacecraft. It is compatible with flight-proven heritage components such as cathodes, Power Processing Units (PPUs), and feed systems. The thruster offers high performance over a long operational life and can operate on xenon, iodine, or krypton propellants. It is available in configurations for direct mounting, with 1-axis gimballing, or with 2-axis gimballing. The gimballed assemblies provide attitude control for control wheel desaturation, which reduces the need for a separate chemical attitude control system, thereby saving mass. The BHT-600 has a long demonstrated lifetime, with erosion modeling predicting a significant portion of its life remaining beyond current testing. Its design has been extensively studied, modeled, and proven to be reliable and robust. An engineering model of the BHT-600 accumulated 7,198 hours of operation (approximately 70 kg Xe propellant throughput) at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, concluding in March 2021, without a discernible drop in thrust or specific impulse. A hybrid BHT-600i (iodine anode, xenon cathode) has also demonstrated over one thousand hours of operation. Busek offers the BHT-600 as a complete and fully integrated Hall Effect thruster system, which includes the cathode, power processing unit, digital control unit, and propellant management systems. These systems combine commercially sourced parts with long flight heritage and in-house produced assemblies and electronics to maximize performance and lifetime.
Documentation
Need the full ICD, test reports or a specific revision? Ask the supplier directly.