A 200 kJ electrical gun for hypervelocity launch

In order to meet the requirements of hypervelocity launch in the context of defending against space debris and deflecting asteroids, an electrical gun with 200 kJ of storage energy was recently built. The electrical gun is composed of 16 gas spark switch-capacitor modules, and pulse current is transmitted by parallel aluminum plates that are insulated by polyester foils. The capacitance, inductance, and resistance of the RLC circuit of the 200 kJ electrical gun are 80 µF, 10.3 nH, and 2.6 mΩ, respectively. It can generate pulse current with a rise time of 1.33 µs and an amplitude of 5.2 MA when short-circuited at a charging voltage of 70 kV. Hypervelocity flyer launch experiments were carried out on the 200 kJ electrical gun, in which a ϕ20 × 0.5 mm2 Mylar flyer (0.22 g) was accelerated to 10 km/s.