Advanced Xenon Feed System (AXFS) Development and Hot-fire Texting

Abstract

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Technology project has been investing in advanced xenon feed system technologies to significantly reduce the cost, mass, and volume while increasing the reliability over the state-of-the-art alternatives. VACCO industries was competitively selected to develop an AXFS under a NASA Research Announcement solicitation and completed their effort with the delivery of an AXFS and hot-fire demonstration. The AXFS development produced two flow control modules, one pressure control module, the AXFS controller and LabVIEW software. The baseline AXFS design is more than a 90 percent reduction in mass, cost, and volume over the Dawn flight system and over 50 percent reduction over comparable TRL 6 flow control systems. The component modules completed environmental testing and integrated hot-fire testing in March of 2009. An overview of the development effort and results of testing are presented.