The study of a plasma jet injected by an on-board plasma thruster

The injected plasma jet-ionosphere interaction features were studied in experiments carried out on board two METEOR satellites. The injected plasma jet propagation depends considerably on jet injection pitch-angle. The impactless jet spreading took place without considerable interaction with the ionosphere plasma, when injected along the magnetic field. By injection across the magnetic field very effective plasma jet-ionosphere plasma and the Earth's magnetic field interaction was observed. Plasma jet injection provoked the generation of electromagnetic fields near the satellite.