Sublimable Propellant Source for Iodine-Fed Ion Propulsion System

NASA Marshall has developed a system for generating iodine vapor from solid iodine for use as a propellant in a Hall or ion thruster propulsion system. Xenon has generally been the preferred propellant for these spacecraft ion propulsion systems but more recently, iodine-based systems have gained significant attention due to comparable performance to xenon, and the system-level advantages of low storage pressure and higher storage density with more propellant per unit volume.