At an operating altitude approx. 120km, PROFAC orbits the Earth, collecting oxygen gas and condenses & stores it on board, for later delivery to a space station in a higher orbit.
PROFAC's drag is compensated by a small nuclear rocket thruster.
Hmmm -- sure wish I could have a look at it.... unfortunately the link doesn't seem to work. Perhaps you could direct us to the NASA page where the link appears, and how to identify it ?
The title is "Overview of Rover Engine Tests Final Report"
It is a 308 page PDF and should make very interesting reading. I did not know that there was a NASA PDF archive open to the public--thanks for the links and the article. Thanks for posting Jim--welcome aboard!
OK, I found out what the problem was -- my browser didn't like the blank space near the end of the URL. Once I took it out, it found the pdf document (11 MB) :
Well, I did prepare it using an electronic word processor...the old DOS version of MS Word, however, most of the figures I had to cut and paste from historical test reports from the 50's and 60's.