The Diagnostics of the External Plasma for the Plasma Rocket

The plasma rocket is located at NASA Johnson Space Center. To produce a thrust in space. an inert gas is ionized into a plasma and heated in the linear section of a tokamak fusion device to 1 x 10(exp 4) - 1.16 x 10(exp 6)K(p= 10(exp 10) - 10(exp 14)/cu cm ). The magnetic field used to contain the plasma has a magnitude of 2 - 10k Gauss. The plasma plume has a variable thrust and specific impulse. A high temperature retarding potential analyzer (RPA) is being developed to characterize the plasma in the plume and at the edge of the magnetically contained plasma. The RPA measures the energy and density of ions or electrons entering into its solid angle of collection. An oscilloscope displays the ion flux versus the collected current. All measurements are made relative to the facility ground. A RPA is being developed in a process which involves the investigation of several prototypes. The first prototype has been tested on a thermal plasma. The knowledge gained from its development and testing were applied to the development of a RPA for collimated plasma. The prototypes consist of four equally spaced grids and an ion collector. The outermost grid is a ground. The second grid acts as a bias to repel electrons. The third is a variable v voltage ion suppressor. Grid four (inner grid) acts to repel secondary electrons, being biased equal to the first. Knowledge gained during these two stages are being applied to the development of a high temperature RPA Testing of this device involves the determination of its output parameters. sensitivity, and responses to a wide range of energies and densities. Each grid will be tested individually by changing only its voltage and observing the output from the RPA. To verify that the RPA is providing proper output. it is compared to the output from a Langmuir or Faraday probe