Finally, for the first time ever, I present the first fully fueled and assembled AIS-ILIS1 ionic liquid ion source electrospray thruster for nanosatellites! We are finally here, the first ever ignition test of this new ultra low cost open source ion thruster! 
Final wet mass of the thruster is 40 grams. So it is safe to say that this first iteration tiny ion thruster carries 1 gram of fuel. However, operating in purely ionic mode of emission, that one gram can last hundreds of hours at several tens of micronewtons of thrust!
For size reference, the thruster is only 45x45x16mm. If this works, it will be, as far as I am aware, the first ever PocketQube compatible ion thruster designed, built, and tested, in addition to opening up advanced ILIS electrospray technology for any nanosat team to afford!
The thruster is now mounted to the Faraday cup test stand, which will be used to collect and measure beam current, verifying operation of the thruster, and giving initial estimates of thrust and ISP performance.
Starting to wire and mount the thruster into the chamber. Because of the control and monitoring, I will need to set up both sides of the chamber.
Instrumentation side is set up and ready to go. Due to the way the thruster is mounted and wired inside, I have to unbolt both flanges to access the wire for the feedthrough connection. On to the thruster side!
The thruster control side is mounted, and everything is wired! Gotta tighten it up, then start pumpdown!
The thruster and Faraday cup stand are in place. With this angle, I can see if I can capture the very faint glow of the ion emission from the slit if it works. The system is sealed and ready to go. Time to start the pumpdown!
Pumpdown has started! While the system is roughing, I will run out to get more bags of ice for the cooling system. I expect pumpdown to be much faster this time around.
Back with ice, filled the cooler, everything looks good, time to turn on the diffusion pump! I expect to be close to testing with an hour or so!
Main chamber pressure is rising with the warm up phase of the diffusion pump. There should be far less outgassing now that I don't have a glass of liquid in the chamber.
Pressure is now dropping, diffusion pump is pumping. Starting to wire up the external control to the feedthrough for the thruster.
We are already in the mid 10^-4 torr range. Still finishing up the last wiring, we will be ready for testing quite soon!
Got some unexpected outgassing, pressure has bumped back up. Hopefully no liquid loss from the thruster.
We are now in the upper 10^-5 Torr range and still dropping nicely.
Mid 10^-5 torr now. This is the long slog, just a waiting game from here.
While waiting for the last bit to drop, I have to say that I don't know if this will work. This is now cutting edge micro-EP. I've never done this before. Could have faulty wiring, something on the board fails, liquid spray, shorting. A million things must go right for it to work
During the test I will go dark for a period since I have to focus on a bunch of stuff at once. I will try to capture video of the emission (if it is visible), as well as the Faraday cup readings showing output beam current.
To operate the thruster, I will turn on the controls, and very slowly raise the input voltage. At some point, probably around 2.2kV or higher, we should start to see some turn on emission.
For this test, I decided to use the widest aperture extractor. While this forces me to operate at higher voltage, it gives more clearance between the emitter and aperture, lowering the risk of liquid bridging and shorting. As a result, I expect thrust to be lower, with higher ISP
Ok, we are about within range to begin the ignition sequence. I'm gonna go dark to focus on the system. I can't promise it will work, but at least it's a good try. I'm not expecting a miracle on the very first try anyway, but we should know soon enough.
Sorry everyone, test is a failure. No good news today, just wasn't good enough. Maybe some very brief spurious emission, but nothing else. Control does work and us wired correctly, but it looks like something on the board failed and is shorting as well.
I'm calling it a day, nothing I can do at this point anyway. 13 hours of testing and prep today, but overall ignition is a failure. Can't say I'm surprised, I wasn't expecting success anyway. Many thanks to everyone for your support during this test.
