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Hall Thruster Testing |
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Since I'm a night person, I opted to be the one to watch the tank during the pumpdown. It usually takes about 7-8 hours and is really noisy. So 1:00 am rolled around and I came in to start the prep work. Here's Emily doing the electrical check (she wanted to come in too and do some calibration before we started). |
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Here's me, getting ready to enter in mass flow data. It was uncertain if our mass flow controllers were actually doing what they said they were so I spent quite a bit of time testing it. They were off by about 10% as it turns out. |
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Here's Emily and me right before we closed the tank. I think she's tired. Makes sense I guess since it is 2 in the morning. |
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| Here's those liquid nitrogen containers. They arrive full and are pretty much empty by the time we get done. <  |
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Since liquid nitrogen flows into the pump, the whole pipe freezes and it actually starts to snow a bit. Kind of neat, but don't touch it. |
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At about 2 in the afternoon, we finally got the thing to light. This is a picture taken looking in through the side viewport. The bright light you're seen is actually a dense energetic plasma with electrons whipping around at 20,000 to 200,000 meters per second. Neat stuff. |
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Another side shot. |
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Another shot taken from the top view port behind the thruster. |
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