Imperial-College - Vacuum Chambers

23 Nov 2018

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Imperial’s large vacuum chamber, situated within the Space Engineering Lab, is a 1.5 m diameter by 2 m length cylindrical vessel fitted with a high capacity cryogenic pumping system (15,000 L/s Xenon) and two parallel turbopumps (2 x 2,200 L/s).  The vacuum chamber incorporates a 0.75 m by 1.5 m cylindrical load lock chamber (isolated from the main chamber by a pneumatic gate valve) for rapid experimental turnaround.  The performance of the vacuum chamber is better than 8×10-8 Torr without propellant flow and better than 2 x 10-5 Torr with 1.5 mg/s Xenon flow input to the thruster. Facility is available now. ​

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​ Electric propulsion vacuum test facility