Mass spectrometric study of various coated targets utilizing the PUPR Mirror/Cusp plasma machine for the NASA Solar Probe space mission

Abstract

The NASA Solar Probe space mission will be a historic operation, flying for the first time into one of the last unexplored regions of the solar system, the Sun's atmosphere or corona; hopefully revolutionizing our knowledge of the physics of the origin and evolution of the solar wind phenomenon. The spacecraft's most prominent feature is the thermal protection system (TPS), composed of a large carbon–carbon conical shield, designed to withstand the Sun's violent temperatures. Thermal testing will be conducted on various coatings on the carbon–carbon targets in order to study mass loss components using mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. It is more generally used to find the composition of a physical sample by generating a mass spectrum representing the masses of sample components. By using a quadrupole mass spectrometer, the effects of plasma on various coated targets were analyzed and the effects of various gases on the plasma were studied on the PUPR Mirror/Cusp (M/C) plasma machine. A series of five tests was performed for this experiment; the first four tests consist of creating plasma with four different gases, and studying the effects of each gas on the plasma using mass spectrometry, in order to decide which plasma resembles the Sun's atmosphere or corona. The fifth test consists of introducing various coated targets, which represent the spacecraft's shield, inside the PUPR M/C plasma machine, to study how the different coatings react with the plasma that best bears a resemblance to the Sun's atmosphere, for approximately 12 h of exposure. After studying the results for the first four tests, it is evident that each gas has a distinctive effect on the plasma. For the fifth test following the study of the mass spectrometry results, it is clear that the quadrupole mass spectrometer was able to detect mass loss components for the introduced targets, and the presence of the coatings were successfully identified inside the PUPR M/C plasma machine, therefore assisting in the shield coating selection for the solar probe aircraft.