NASA ion engine has worked non-stop for 5 and a half years

NASA announced that the research project of an ion engine codenamed NEXT (NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster) has crossed a significant milestone - the engine worked without stopping for 48,000 hours (or 5.5 years), which is the longest test time for such systems for space engines . The ultimate goal of the project is to develop an economical and powerful engine for long missions in deep space, which are provided for by the Planetary Science Decadal Survey research program.

Launched in June 2005 at the Glenn NASA Research Center in Cleveland, the engine converts solar energy from installed solar panels to power a 7 kW ion installation that accelerates xenon charged particles to a speed of 145,000 km / h, which provides traction acceleration. Despite the fact that the characteristic drawback of ion engines is low thrust, in this case, the situation is characterized as a significant improvement in performance and, thus, engine power.

The cost effectiveness of the NEXT can be described by the following comparison - during the experiment, 870 kg of xenon was spent, which made it possible to obtain the same impulse of movement that it would be possible to obtain by burning 10,000 kg of standard rocket fuel.
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At the moment, Dawn spacecraft is already functioning in space on an ion engine, launched to study the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

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