NASA will use the cathode in ion thrusters for long-range space mission, such as Mars and lunar cargo missions. It will use it for voyages to more distant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. The cathode may be used wherever long life and higher specific impulse are required. The cathode may eventually enable manned long-range missions. A higher emission cathode would enable higher power and frequency in klystrons and TWTs. This would allow higher data rate transmissions.
The cathode will improve performance and life on non-NASA ion and Hall Effect thrusters, used in near-Earth missions. Of particular interest is its use in geosynchronous satellites for circularization, attitude control and station keeping. Also, many vacuum electron devices such as klystron, traveling wave tubes and even x-ray tubes would benefit from this work. In particular, this proposal has significant effort devoted to improving the mechanical strength and geometrical stability of scandate cathode matrices. The lack of these qualities has been one reason they are not used in linear beam devices where focusing stability depends on cathode dimensional stability.
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