Laboratory study of carbon ablation in Jupiter-like heating environment

Here we report on experiments where ablation of carbon-based materials (typically used for spacecraft heat shields) was studied at high heating environments available in the DIII-D tokamak. Due to inherent properties of the tokamak plasma (e.g., high temperature, rotation, and fast flows), the heat flux deposited to the material samples is comparable to that experienced by the Galileo probe during its entry into Jupiter’s atmosphere. In this presentation, we discuss scaling between laboratory and space conditions, specifics of the experimental design, and calculations of material ablation as a function of incident heat flux for three types of carbon: porous, glassy, and ATJ graphite. The validity of several analytical ablation models available in the space community is tested against mass loss rates recorded in the experiments. The experimental results are further compared to a numerical model of meteor ablation adapted for entry into Jupiter’s atmosphere, which allows for scaling between laboratory and space conditions. We find that the predictions from the analytical ablation models are reasonably consistent with experimental measurements of material mass loss rates.