Ad Astra tests world's most powerful ion engine

From David Shiga
New Scientist-Space

"Since 2005, the Ad Astra Rocket Company of Webster, Texas, has been working to perfect a type of engine it calls VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket)."

"Now, the company has run such an engine at full power for the first time. On Wednesday, it ran its VX-200 engine at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber in Houston, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time."

"It's the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now," says Franklin Chang-Diaz, the former NASA astronaut who heads the company."

Read the story, HERE.

NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster: The NEXT Ion Propulsion System for Solar System Exploration

Eric J. Pencil & Scott W. Benson, NASA Glenn Research Center

This viewgraph presentation reviews NASA s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Ion Propulsion system. The NEXT project is developing a solar electric ion propulsion system.

The NEXT project is advancing the capability of ion propulsion to meet NASA robotic science mission needs, planned as a significant improvement in performance over the state of the art electric propulsion systems, such as NASA's Solar Electric Propulsion Technology Application Readiness (NSTAR).

The status of NEXT development is reviewed, including information on the NEXT Thruster, the power processing unit, the propellant management system (PMS), the digital control interface unit, and the gimbal.

Block diagrams NEXT system are presented. Also a review of the lessons learned from the DAWN and NSTAR systems is provided. In summary, the NEXT project activities through 2007 have brought next-generation ion propulsion technology to a sufficient maturity level.

Download the pdf presentation HERE.

Nano thrusters: a boost to space travel?

Brian Gilchrist and his colleagues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, believe they have potentially solved a problem that currently haunts modern space travel: waste of energy and damage to the large engines used to propel the shuttles.

Their answer: Nano Thrusters.