European wind tunnel sees first hot air plasma
For the first time an ionised gas at 6200 degrees Celsius was made to travel through an arc jet test facility at four km per second on 13 March. The hot air plasma passed through SCIROCCO, the newly constructed Italian arc jet test facility, which has just entered the acceptance test phase. The project has been funded jointly by the ESA and the Italian Ministry for University and Research. The wind tunnel will be used to study earth atmosphere re-entry and space vehicle trajectory. The test facility is the largest of its kind in the world. It features a large electrical segmented 70 megawatt arc heater and a nozzle with a two metre diameter exit to allow full scale models of space vehicle thermal protection systems to be tested for up to 30 minutes, a period which corresponds to the duration of re-entry. The tunnel can also be used in other fields of aerospace technology development, such as advanced space propulsion and combustion systems. European and Japanese aerospace companies are currently in discussion with the ESA and the Italian Ministry on exploiting the testing tool.