The ATS-F ion engine was mounted on a simulated spacecraft and was operated in a 22 by 35 foot vacuum chamber, using the same neutralizer control point as in earlier small chamber tests. The control point was in the middle of a range of 16 steps and, thus, the range should be adequate for transition to space flight. Measurement of the near- and far-field ions showed that the ion beam was well defined in a cone of 18-degrees half-angle. The material deposition experiment indicated that the ATS-F solar array would accumulate less than 0.2 A of aluminum per thousand hours of thruster operation, so that the corresponding power loss could be considered negligible. An interesting result was that the coupling between the beam and spacecraft was strong enough to require relatively large increases in the beam potential as the neutralizer bias was increased.
Measurement of ion thruster exhaust characteristics and interaction with simulated ATS-F spacecraft
Electric Propulsion Conference ; 1973 ; Lake Tahoe, NV
1973-10-01
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Keine Angabe
Englisch
Interaction of a Simulated Spacecraft Thruster Exhaust Plume with a Wall: Influence of Singularities
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997
|Interaction of a Simulated Spacecraft Thruster Exhaust Plume with a Wall: Influence of Singularities
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|Thruster Exhaust Effects Upon Spacecraft
NTIS | 1970
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