Background and justification:
•It is critical to understand the physics behind each of the nouvelle Electric Propulsion technologies arising nowadays.
•Research activities in this direction are heavily supported by test activities.
•In order to get the most valuable amount of data from these tests, an appropriate set of diagnostics can provide the confidence needed to validate the physics models behind the thrusters’ design, as well as the prototypes operation performances.
Objective(s):
•Develop, integrate and validate a Diagnosis ToolKit(DTK) that improves the measurement performances of currently available diagnosis systems for Plasma Thrusters.
•Integrateseveral probes to cover the characterisationof different plasma properties: RF Compensated Langmuir Probe (RFCLP), Faraday Cup (FC) & Retarding Potential Analyser(RPA).
•Validate the toolkit and integrate a post-processing tool to derive Plasma Thrusters performances combining the results obtainedfrom the probes.

Achievements and status:
•Review of the State of Art of probes for Plasma Thrusters.
•Definition of probes requirements.
•Design and fabrication of several RFCLP, a couple of FC and an RPA.
•Integration and assembly of the probes at UC3M premises using different UC3M-SENER owned HPTs prototypes.
•Validation (by test) of the probes: RFCLP and FC pairs comparison, and RPA-LIF validation.
•Post-processing tool for results processing and interpretation.
Benefits:
•Diagnostics Tool Kit, composed of RFCLP/FC/RPA which can be used for the assessment of power energy conversion.
•Better understanding of the RFCLP use in Magnetic Nozzle plasmas.
•Better understanding of ion optics and neutral density effects on the FC collected current in a plasma thruster plume.
•Better understanding of LIF spectroscopy in a Magnetic Nozzle on atoms and atomic ions and RPA use and limitations in Magnetic Nozzles.