Mars and lunar cargo missions, and the upcoming Juno mission to Jupiter. Also, piloted interplanetary missions become feasible with sufficient cathode output and life. Earth transfer, stationkeeping and earth escape would occur at less cost, size and mass. Improved conventional reservoir cathodes, following from this effort, are needed in linear beam amplifiers to increase data rates in space communications. Output power, life, bandwidth, and frequency will all improve with better cathodes. These devices include traveling wave tubes and klystrons.
Ion thrusters are used in commercial satellites to stabilize their orbit and to change it. A higher performance, longer-life thruster might lower the number required, raise efficiencies and reliability, lower mass and size. Other areas include Department of Defense radars and communications. This is the biggest market for high performance cathodes. Reservoir cathodes such as are developed in this project would dramatically increase the life and performance of these systems. Non-governmental applications include high speed x-ray tomography systems, electron beam stimulated lasers, and geosynchronous satellite downlinks and ion thrusters.
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