Electric Propulsion (EP)
spacecraft thrusters are beginning to play an ever-more important role in
station keeping and long duration missions due to their high efficiency and
a low fuel consumption. Since this technology is still fairly new and
lacks the extensive space heritage, any changes to their design need to be
thouroughly tested in a vacuum tank. However, the limiting factors of EP,
such as the grid erosion or plasma coating are slow to manifest. As
such, the thrusters need to be tested for extensive periods. Such tests
are not only financially expensive, but the long test duration itself ties
the resources of the research department.
Therefore, multiple groups are working on development of computer simulation
models that can predict the behavior of a given thruster with a reasonable
accuracy. One such a program is being developed at Virginia Tech. This
webpage provides the necessary project background information, as well as
a visual analysis of the simulated plasma plume around the Deep Space 1 satellite.
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- Contract
- Physical Model
- Plasma Simulation
- Immersed Finite Element
- DS1 Simulation
- Tools
- Analysis
- AF/MIT/VT Collaboration
- References
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