Influence of different aid initiation materials on laser thruster impulse

In order to investigate the influence of different aid initiation materials on laser thruster, the maximum swing angle was measured by using the swing track screened with Hi-spec camera. Based on the swing angle, impulse of laser thruster was obtained using different aid initiation materials. When ambient pressure is 0.1 MPa, the impulse of laser thruster with the aid of POM is 46 mN·s and this is 2.496 times of that without aid initiation. The result shows that most of the aid initiation materials can increase the plasma. If the aid initiation material is POM, the laser thruster impulse is the largest. The aid initiation becomes more and more important as the ambient pressure decreases.