Abstract: High specific impulse Hall thrusters have been valued from the early stage of the development of Hall thrusters, but there are few studies on parameter comparison, current changes and oscillation characteristics related to engineering applications. The performance and startup characteristics of HET80HP high specific impulse Hall thruster were given by measuring the thrust, current variation and oscillation of the thruster under different working conditions. The research results show that HET80HP high specific impulse Hall thruster has better performance than the traditional Hall thruster under the conditions of large flow rate and high discharge voltage. During cold start, there is a current spike in the discharge current under normal magnetic field conditions, and the current takes a long time to achieve relative stability. The variation of current during the hot start of different magnetic field configurations indicates that the presence of current spikes is mainly related to the magnetic field configuration and has no obvious relationship with the startup  temperature. In addition, by comparing the difference in thruster specific impulse and average frequency under different magnetic fields, it can be seen that the average frequency of lowfrequency oscillation of thruster can better reflect the magnitude of thruster specific impulse.

Key words: electric propulsion, Hall thruster, high specific impulse, discharge current, lowfrequency oscillations