PPPL's Hall Thruster consumes several hundred watts of power, making it suitable for a satellite with a mass in the range of a few hundred kilograms. PPPL physicists believe there may be a market for Hall Thrusters operating at 1,000 watts or more, but say predictions are difficult to make. They also speculate about the development of Hall microthrusters with power outputs in the 100-watt range, useful for very small satellites with masses of 50 to 100 kilograms. One could envision a large satellite disbursing hundreds of the smaller ones for the exploration of a planet or as a spaced-based radar array. Plasma thrusters for current space applications employ xenon propellant.
Xenon is relatively easy to ionize and store onboard the spacecraft.
Planned upgrades include segmenting the thruster. Each segment would be held at a specific electric potential, enabling researchers to control exactly where the voltage drop occurs along the length of the thruster. PPPL's Hall Thruster was designed with a modular configuration so as to allow multiple thruster geometries that could be diagnosed in detail easily. This includes the ability to measure precisely in three dimensions how the thrust varies with position. This information could be used to arrive at techniques to narrow the plume and obtain more control over the outflow from the thruster, possibly improving its efficiency.