The design, development, and implementation of a solar environmental simulator (SES) for the SAO Faraday Cup on Solar Probe Plus
2013
This paper describes the implementation of a solar simulator, know as the Solar Environment Simulator (SES), that can
simulate solar flux levels up to those encountered at 9.8 solar radii. The paper outlines the design, and the challenges of
realizing the SES. It also describes its initial uses for proving out the design of the Solar Winds Electrons, Alphas, and
Protons (SWEAP) Faraday cup.
The upcoming Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission requires that its in-situ plasma instrument (the Faraday Cup) survive and
operate over an unprecedented range of temperatures. One of the key risk mitigation activities during Phase B has been
to develop and implement a simulator that will enable thermal testing of the Faraday Cup under flight-like conditions.
While still in the initial start-up, the SES has proven to be an instrumental component in the process of predicting the inflight
performance of the SWEAP Faraday Cup. With near continuously variable power control above the threshold of
1.6kW/lamp up to approximately 6.5kW/lamp, the SES has been used to determine the system response to a wide range
of incoming flux, thereby making it possible to correlate detailed thermal models to a high degree of certainty (see Ref.
[1], Figure 1.1).
The SES consists of a set of repurposed, and slightly re-designed standard movie projectors. The projectors have proven
to be an economical and effective means to safely hold and control the xenon short-arc lamps that are the basis of the
SES. This paper outlines the key challenges controlling the extremely high flux levels (~70w/cm^2) necessary to make
the SES a useful test facility.
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