{"id":314,"date":"2017-02-23T06:53:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T06:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.74.50.173\/2017\/02\/vasimr-plasma-rocket-targeting-100.html"},"modified":"2017-10-15T13:21:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T13:21:33","slug":"vasimr-plasma-rocket-targeting-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/2017\/02\/vasimr-plasma-rocket-targeting-100.html","title":{"rendered":"Vasimr plasma rocket targeting 100 hours of continuous operation at 100 kW power level early in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA NEXTSTep program awarded Ad Astra Vasimr plasma propulsion a three-year, $9 million contract in 2015. Ad Astra must fire its plasma rocket for 100 hours, at a power level of 100 kilowatts in 2018.<\/p>\n

This February, the company has worked about halfway through that contract.<\/a> Ars Technica reports that the VASIMR engine has been fired at 100kW for 10 seconds and 50kW for one minute.<\/p>\n

The goal of this work is to demonstrate a VASIMR\u00ae engine in thermal steady-state by operating it continuously for<\/A> 100 hours at a power level of 100 kW<\/p>\n

Objectives
\n\u25e6 Achieve the goal over the course of 3 years in 3 phases
\n\u25e6 Phase a: Shake-out basic systems, pulses of minutes, uncooled booster section, accumulate 1 hour, inspect
\n\u25e6 Phase b: Add cooling to booster section, accumulate 100 hours, inspect
\n\u25e6 Phase c: Upgrade rocket core cooling for heat rejection at \u2248 200 \u00b0C, shake out high temperature cooling systems, install PPUs in vacuum, execute a 100 hour continuous test, inspect<\/p>

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They are successfully hitting plan milestones<\/B><\/p>\n

Rocket core integration with magnet (Aug 2016)
\n\u25e6 Field line mapping and rocket core alignment
\n\u25e6 Instrumentation and electrical testing
\n* Integration of VX-200SSa test article in chamber (Sept 2016)
\n\u25e6 Cooling line hookups and leak checking
\n\u25e6 RF matching circuit connections and tuning
\n\u25e6 Command, control and data acquisition verification
\n* Initial high-power firing with plasma in Phase-a (Oct 2016)
\n\u25e6 Phase-a will have pulse lengths on the order of minutes
\n\u25e6 Measure rocket performance
\n\u25e6 Evaluate aspects of the chamber and plasma dump
\n* Install final components for VX-200SSb (May 2017)
\n\u25e6 Fully cooled with operation times on the order of hours
\n* Hot steady-state operation with VX-200SS (Feb 2018)
\n\u25e6 Ready for 100 hours of continuous operation at 100 kW
\n\u25e6 New PPUs installed inside the vacuum chamber<\/p>\n

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NASA NEXTSTep program awarded Ad Astra Vasimr plasma propulsion a three-year, $9 million contract in 2015. Ad Astra must fire its plasma rocket for 100 hours, at a power level of 100 kilowatts in 2018. This February, the company has worked about halfway through that contract. Ars Technica reports that the VASIMR engine has been … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,88,14,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}