Quadrupole mass spectrometer for Space Shuttle applications - Flight capabilities and ground calibration

The AFGL Quadrupole Ion/Neutral Mass Spectrometer (QINMS), its flight capabilities, and a few examples of QINMS data from the STS-4 flight are discussed in addition to the beam facility and calibration procedures used at the Los Alamos National Laboratory facility. A 5-eV atomic oxygen beam is produced using a continuous optical discharge technique, and the resulting pumped beam has sufficient high flux and velocity to simulate orbital conditions. The calibrated instrument will be used in the NASA Johnson Space Center Evaluation of Oxygen Interactions with Materials experiment to measure the density of ambient oxygen and to identify the products of oxygen-surface reactions.