An assessment of a novel laser‐electric hybrid propulsion system was conducted, in which a laser‐induced plasma was induced through laser beam irradiation onto a target and accelerated by electrical means instead of the direct acceleration only by using a laser beam. A fundamental study of newly developed rectangular laser‐assisted pulsed‐plasma thruster (PPT) was conducted. Inducing a short‐duration conductive plasma between electrodes with certain voltages, short‐duration switching or a discharge was achieved. At low‐voltage conditions (∼ 100 V), applied to electrodes or charged to a capacitor, it was confirmed that electric discharge can be achieved even under low voltage conditions. From the results, it was found that discharge duration at the low‐voltage case was as long as that of laser‐induced plasma. Therefore, the discharge in the low‐voltage case must be controlled with an incident laser pulse, or a laser‐induced plasma. While in high‐voltage cases (∼ 2000 V), the discharge duration was much longer than that of laser‐induced plasma. In this case, the laser‐induced plasma should be leading main discharge from a capacitor, where some amount of neutral components of vaporized propellant must be ionized through the discharge. Considering ratios of the laser energy to the discharge energies, the discharge process in the high‐voltage mode cases must be defined as the laser‐assisted electric discharge, or the laser‐assisted electric propulsion mode, while in the low‐voltage mode case with smaller electric energy, as the electrically‐assisted laser‐induced process, or the electric‐assisted laser propulsion mode. Moreover, plasma behaviors emitted from each thruster in various cases were observed with the ICCD camera. It was shown that the plasma behaviors were almost identical between low and high voltage cases in initial several hundred nanoseconds, however, plasma emission with longer duration was observed in higher voltage cases. Canted current sheet structures were also observed in the higher voltage cases using a larger capacitor. © 2004 American Institute of Physics