As promised here is a thread on SpaceX announcement about their new Hall thruster for Starlink V2 mini. Trying to go over the figures they published and why it's kind of a unique thruster. Please excuse in advance typos, I had a long day of meetings.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1629898794874687489?s=20

SpaceX has been using Hall thrusters since the beginning of the Starlink project. Hall thrusters are a type of electric/plasma/ion propulsion that was developed in the USSR in the 70s. I go a little bit in more details on how they work in the thread below

https://twitter.com/lougrims/status/1516013489722216450

So did you know that no-one really knows why the most used spacecraft propulsion system today actually works?

I have been bored and kind of sick for the past 2 days so here is a quick thread on Hall thruster physics:
1/ So 1st quick introduction. A Hall thruster (HT) is a type of electric propulsion system, it uses electricity to accelerate mass and push spacecraft along. While they are not really a new tech (flown 1st in the 70s) they are now dominating, being used on Starlink and OneWeb
2/

1/ After a few days of stuffy head here is the promised thread on the the pic from Amazon's project Kuiper thruster.
So first of all it's a hall thruster which is somewhat of a surprise since there was rumors of development an electrospray from their prop engineers background. 2/ There was also talks of using non-pressurized propellants at some point in their FCC fillings, which is not really a usual option for Hall thrusters (HT).