This is Cannae’s torsion pendulum thrust measurement equipment. It is designed to measure non-superconducting thruster forces from 2 uN up to 3000 uN. We have some unique features built into our equipment including liquid metal contacts which can be disengaged during test runs, laser micrometer and irradiance meter displacement sensors, Li-ion vacuum battery power sources, and high voltage operational capability. The whole test apparatus is located in a 36 inch diameter vacuum chamber base (visible in the picture). The bell-jar top of the chamber is not pictured here. We will be running additional vacuum chamber testing this week, and will place a picture of the assembled chamber in a future post.

In this picture is the Cannae thruster which was tested at NASA JSC in 2013 and reported on by NASA JSC at the 2014 AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference. Cannae has additional thruster designs that we are demonstrating in this test equipment.