Qualification Tests of a Monopropellant, Brazilian Catalyst Loaded, 5 N Thrust Space Propulsion Subsystems
- Paper number
IAC-07-C4.1.08
- Author
Prof. Aguinaldo M. Serra Jr., Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil
- Year
2007
- Abstract
This work presents some results obtained in tests under altitude simulation, during the performance evaluation of a 5 N monopropellant thruster using a 32The Brazilian Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - INPE) is responsible for the Brazilian catalyst development, and the correspondent evaluation under altitude simulation. The 5 N thruster utilized was designed and constructed by Brazilian company FibraForte and qualified in tests using the commercial catalyst S-405. This propulsion subsystem operated efficiently for 3 hours, with a large number of cold and hot starts, continuous and pulsed regimes. This operation period represents twice the total amount of lifetime required by the Brazilian space program. In the comparison between the same 5 N thruster loaded with the commercial catalyst S-405 and with Brazilian catalyst, under the same operational conditions, overall firing results showed the excellent performance of this new catalyst as compared to the reference one. The main propulsive parameters evaluated were pressure, temperature, thrust and ignition delay. At last, the reproducibility of the 32
- Abstract document