Fusion is now being used for testing heatshield materials

For the last blog for this semester, I figured that I would go out with a bang.

Researchers have found a way to use fusion to test heat shield materials for spacecraft. 

According to wired.com, "On December 7, 1995, a NASA probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere and immediately started to burn."

The probe was apart of the Galileo mission at NASA. This prompted scientists to look at their data from the mission and tweak the design of the heat shields. 

Wired.com also goes on to state that there had been some testing with lasers, plasma jets, and high-speed projectiles. None of which proved fruitful. 

Kostadinova, one of scientists who helped contributed to the fusion alternative said, “No aerospace facility on Earth can reach the high heating conditions that you experience during atmospheric entry into something like Jupiter."

How many reactors are there for such a purpose?

According to wired.com, "there are hundreds of these reactors, known as tokamaks, in state-funded research facilities around the world. Including the Joint European Torus and ITER."

Both Kostadinova and Orlov were more interested in the plasma inside the reactors. They both realized that plasma would be best suited for entering Jupiter's atmosphere.

As such, they both used the DIII-D facilities to run a series of experiments on ablation. Ablation is according to Wikipedia, the removal of material from a surface by vaporization, chipping or other erosive procedures.

In other words, they wanted to replicate the conditions of entering Jupiter's atmosphere.

"Using a port at the bottom of the tokamak, Kostadinova and Orlov inserted a series of carbon rods into the plasma flow, and used high-speed and infrared cameras and spectrometers to track how they disintegrated, says wired. 

Wired also goes on to state, "They also fired minuscule carbon pellets into the reactor at high speed, mimicking on a small scale what the heat shield on the Galileo probe would have encountered in Jupiter’s atmosphere."

I couldn't find a video to for ablation. I wanted to show you a visual of what it was but I can't. However, I can show you the inside of a Tokamak reactor.

Image courtesy of https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-scheme-of-tokamak-Figure-taken-from-3_fig2_297725507

There is honestly too much to talk about with this. So I'm going to stop here. As always, I encourage you to do your own research on this and visit the link to my source to learn more.


https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-fusion-spacecraft-jupiter/ 


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