Design, Fabrication, and Test of a LOX/LCH4 RCS Igniter at NASA

Abstract A workhorse liquid oxygen-liquid methane (LOX/LCH 4 ) rocket igniter was recently tested at NASA Glenn Research Center’s (GRC) Research Combustion Laboratory (RCL). These tests were conducted in support of the Reaction Control Engine (RCE) development task of the Propulsion and Cryogenics Advanced Development (PCAD) project. The igniter was a GRC in-house design used to evaluate the ignition processes for LOX/LCH 4 . The test matrix was developed to examine the flammability of LOX/LCH 4 over a range of oxidizer-to-fuel mixture ratios, both in the core fuel flow and total flow. In addition, testing also examined the durability of the hardware by accumulating ignition pulses. Over the course of testing, a total of 1402 individual ignition pulses were successfully demonstrated over the range of mixture ratios. Testing was halted after the failure of the ceramic in the igniter spark plug. Introduction The impetus for the development of liquid oxygen liquid methane (LOX/LCH 4 ) Reaction Control Engines (RCE) is based on several factors. First, while hypergolic propellants for spacecraft attitude control have been used since the 1960s, their use results in high operating costs for manned vehicles. With the development of Orion CEV, plans are underway to mitigate the safety concerns and operating costs that burden these propellants by using nontoxic cryogenic propellants (ref. 1). In-situ resource utilization on a future trip to Mars then creates a driver for the use of LOX/LCH