NASA's New Millenium program will fly a xenon ion propulsion system on the Deep Space 1 Mission. Tests were conducted under NASA's Solar Electric Propulsion Technology Applications Readiness (NSTAR) Program with 3 different engineering model ion thrusters to determine thruster thermal characteristics over the NSTAR operating range in a variety of thermal environments. A liquid nitrogen-cooled shroud was used to cold-soak the thruster to -120 C. Initial tests were performed prior to a mature spacecraft design. Those results and the final, severe, requirements mandated by the spacecraft led to several changes to the basic thermal design. These changes were incorporated into a final design and tested over a wide range of environmental conditions.


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    Title :

    Thermal Environmental Testing of NSTAR Engineering Model Ion Thrusters


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Electric Propulsion ; 1997 ; Cleveland, OH, United States


    Publication date :

    1999-01-01


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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