DLR vacuum test facilities for thruster plume investigation

Kurzfassung

The German Aerospace Center, DLR, operates a pair of vacuum facilities dedicated to researching thruster plumes from small reaction control thrusters. Both facilities are located at the DLR Institute for Aerodynamics and Flow Technology in Göttingen, Germany. While the 12m3 Contamination Chamber Göttingen (CCG) lends itself well to plume near-field investigations, the High-Vacuum Plume Test Facility for Chemical Thrusters, STG-CT, is specifically designed to provide and maintain a space-like vacuum environment for researching plume flow and plume impingement from satellite reaction control thrusters. Its unique liquid-helium driven cryopump of 30m2 allows maintaining a background pressure <10-5 mbar even when molecular hydrogen is a plume constituent. Exemplary results from experiments with a 10N MMH/MON bi-propellant are presented