A test firing of Europe’s Helicon Plasma Thruster, developed with ESA by SENER and the Universidad Carlos III’s Plasma & Space Propulsion Team (EP2-UC3M) in Spain. This compact, electrodeless and low voltage design is ideal for the propulsion of small satellites, including maintaining the formation of large orbital constellations.
![](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/tmb/2020/imageplasmap.jpg)
Source:
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-image-plasma-propulsion-small-satellites.html