Power Supplies

The LDPP facility uses a power supply capable of driving roughly 0.5 A and charging capacitors to a voltage of 5 kV. This power supply is used to recharge a pulsed plasma thruster capacitor after it has been discharged.

Previous Use

Use The LDPP facility was first used at the Giannini Scientific Corporation by Ducati for much of his work on the MPD arc. It was presented to EPPDyL in 1975 and was unused until 1998, when a full-scale effort was launched to bring this facility on-line for pulsed propulsion and micropropulsion research. Other experiments in this facility include performance testing of the MIT 50 W Hall thruster and a Cylindrical Hall Thruster developed at PPPL, extensive testing on ablative Z-pinch pulsed plasma thrusters (AZPPT), and investigation of detachment mechanisms in magnetic nozzles.