Ground Vacuum Facility to Simulate Low Earth Orbit Plasma Environment

Abstract

This paper presents a large vacuum facility (6-ft-diameter, 10-ft-long chamber) equipped with a magnetic filter-type low Earth orbit plasma source. A recommended operating envelope for the plasma source was established through single-point measurements by varying the discharge currents of the plasma source and the gas flow rates. A three-axis translation stage was fabricated and tested with 2D and 3D scans of the simulated plasma environment. The measured plasma density during this study was between [Formula: see text] for the electrons and [Formula: see text] for the ions, whereas the electron and ion temperatures ranged from 0.55 to 2.06 eV and 1 to 3 eV, respectively. The simulated plasma environment compares well with orbital equivalents, specifically the F layers of the ionosphere.