NASA NTRS2018
The Hall Effect Rocket with Magnetic Shielding (HERMeS) is a 12.5 kW magnetically shielded Hall thruster presently under development for deep-space missions. A development model HERMeS thruster, TDU-2, with borosilicate channel walls, has successfully undergone proto-qualification testing including random vibration and thermal-vacuum, demonstrating the thruster can survive critical launch and operational environmental requirements. The three-axis random vibrational tests were performed with the thruster body mounted directly to the shaker table using a modified loading schedule to compensate for the vibration isolation dampers under design for the flight thruster. Initial random vibration testing revealed issues with fragmentation of magnetic coil potting material and thruster spool mount fabrication weaknesses that were addressed with an alternate potting material and fabrication revisions that were then successfully retested with an additional round of random vibration tests. Thermal-vacuum testing involved three cycles of full-power 600 V 12.5 kW thruster operation from -121°C to +373°C which included eight hours at peak temperature as well as a hot restart. A thermal model of the test configuration was developed and validated with the experiment results within an average difference of 5°C. Before and after the random vibrational and thermal-vacuum tests, the thruster performance, plasma plume, thrust vector angle, discharge characteristics, and magnetic field profile were measured. The thruster performance, magnetic field, and most other parameters remained invariant throughout the environmental testing campaign. During the thermal testing, an increase in the discharge oscillation amplitude of 11% was observed as well as subtle thrust vector changes of ±0.2° as the thruster warmed from -121°C to +373°C.