Thermal Vacuum Facility 6
Thermal Vacuum Facility 6 (VF-6) has a long history of providing high-vacuum environmental testing of electric propulsion, replicating thermal vacuum conditions, simulating in-space solar radiance, acting as a power conversion testbed, and evaluating solar power conversion by both solar arrays and solar thermal instrumentation. VF-6 has been key in conducting a variety of tests to evaluate prototype solar array modules, thermal shielding materials, communication devices, and a variety of other sensors and components.
The goal of the most recent VF-6 reconfiguration was to bring an additional vacuum facility online for high-power Hall thruster testing, and to provide a second vacuum facility at NASA’s Glenn Research Center for additional missions instrument testing.
VF-6 upgrades included performance and plasma plume diagnostics, backsputter diagnostics, facility pressure diagnostics, enhanced power and propellant systems, both slow- and high-speed telemetry acquisition systems, a video surveillance system, and improved vacuum chamber shielding from thruster-generated sputtering of high-energy accelerated ions.