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Ground-based electric propulsion (EP) test facilities interact with operating thrusters. The resultant ground-based thruster test data does not represent in-space performance or lifetime. These facility effects include elevated pressure from residual, inadequately pumped gas in the test facility, contaminants from the facility interacting with the thruster, and uncertain electrical paths through the thruster plume and the facility walls. Over the past 40 years, facilities, test methodologies, and numerical models have been established for EP devices approaching 20 kW. These methods have primarily been empirical, e.g., establishing empirical requirements for pumping speed, adopting low sputter wall liners, or trying to electrically isolate the thruster. For low-power Hall effect thrusters (HETs) and gridded ion thrusters (GITs), we have a high degree of confidence in ground tests largely due to flight experience.
Universally, facility effects become more pronounced as EP power increases. The correspondingly higher mass flow rates lead to higher facility background densities. The higher energy flux promotes additional backsputter, and the larger plumes and currents lead to more pronounced electrical effects. The ongoing Joint AdvaNced PropUlsion InStitute (JANUS) has made significant progress in identifying and assessing various facility effect factors and in characterizing their impact on thruster discharge and plume physics [[1]]. These efforts continue with parallel modeling and experimentation across all research groups within the institute.
[1] Walker, M. L. R., et al., "Overview of the Joint AdvaNced PropUlsion InStitute (JANUS)," IEPC-2022-156, 37th International Electric Propulsion Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, June 19-23, 2022.
Current investments by NASA suggest that MW-class EP systems will be part of NASA’s future exploration systems. At these power levels, clustering individual EP strings is likely necessary to reach the MW-class EP system. In order to design and develop these high-power EP systems, NASA will need to purchase and install a new ground-based vacuum facility. To date, requirements for such a facility do not exist. JANUS has built a significant body of work that addresses the challenges of ground-based testing of EP devices through theoretical, experimental, and modeling studies.[1] The Mars Architecture Team has defined a range of Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) / Chemical and Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) / hybrid propulsion architectures. NASA is tasked to determine the ground test facility requirements for the development, qualification, and acceptance testing of the NEP/Chem and SEP/Chem options. The JANUS products and tools can be efficiently exercised to provide a reference facility to meet the recommendations and requirements generated through the Space Technology Research Institute (STRI).
[1] https://januselectricpropulsion.com/publications-new
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