New Ion Engine Sets Thrust Record
An ion engine has smashed the record for total thrust in a NASA test. The successful test means the engine could be used in future NASA missions.Ion engines work by accelerating electrically charged atoms, or ions, through an electric field, thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction.
The thrust they provide at any given moment is very small, roughly equal to the force needed to hold up a sheet of paper against Earth’s gravity. But they can operate continuously in space for years using very little fuel, ultimately providing a much bigger boost than a chemical rocket.
The Dawn mission, which launched on Thursday, is equipped with NASA’s first generation of ion engines, called NSTAR. Dawn’s three NSTAR engines will allow it to reach the asteroid belt and park in orbit around two different asteroids.
The agency has also been testing a more advanced ion engine, called NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT), which generates 2.5 times as much thrust as an NSTAR engine.
Now, NEXT has broken a record, providing more “total impulse” than any previous ion engine. Total impulse is a measure of the overall acceleration that an engine would provide to a spacecraft. It is the result of multiplying the engine’s thrust by how long it fires.
Record fuel
The NEXT engine has now been fired for over 12,000 hours (500 days), providing more than 10 million Newton-seconds of impulse, more than any ion engine has ever achieved.
During this time, it has processed more than 245 kilograms of fuel in the form of xenon gas, a record amount for an ion engine. The amount of fuel an ion engine can handle before wearing down is critical, since ion engines on spacecraft need to fire for years at a time.
Previous estimates have suggested NEXT engines could safely handle 450 kilograms of fuel in their lifetime. NSTAR is rated for only 150 kilograms of fuel throughput, although one NSTAR engine has processed 235 kilograms of fuel in a previous test.
“This test validates NEXT technology for a wide range of NASA solar system exploration missions, as well as the potential for Earth-space commercial ventures,” says NEXT principal investigator Mike Patterson of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
NEXT could power a mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan. It would require about 20 kilowatts of engine power to get there if the mission included both an orbiter and a lander. “We could do that with an array of three thrusters, plus a spare,” NEXT project manager Scott Benson of Glenn told New Scientist.
Star Wars
Although NSTAR and NEXT both use xenon gas as a propellant, NEXT accelerates the xenon ions more efficiently, providing up to 236 milliNewtons of thrust compared to NSTAR’s maximum of 92 mN. The ion engines used on Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft to the asteroid Itokawa use 22 mN, while those used on the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 Moon probe operated at 70 mN.
NEXT can also vary its thrust by a factor of 11, as compared with NSTAR’s factor of five. This means it can throttle down to lower levels as it travels farther from the Sun and receives less sunlight, allowing it to operate at greater distances than NSTAR.
Although ion engines are just beginning to see regular use on scientific probes, they have been a common sight in science fiction for many years. Dawn spacecraft engineer Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, reminded journalists at a recent press conference of the ion engines used in the Star Wars movies.
“If you remember the TIE fighters that Darth Vader and the Evil Empire used to fight the rebel alliance, TIE stood for ‘twin ion engines’,” he said. “Well, Dawn does the Star Wars TIE fighters one better because we use three ion engines.”
Similar Posts:
- New Space Suit Supplier For NASA
- Probes To Swarm Over Mars
- Moon Penetration Missiles
- Hubble to be Souped Up
- Mars Polygon Mystery
- Satellite Tending Robot
- Living Creatures in space
- China’s New Military Space Station
- New Space Plane Gets Cash Infusion
- Water Detected at Edge of Universe
Loading ...
Ion Engines don’t have fuel, they have reaction mass.
-jcr
Fuel definition
3. an energy source for engines, power plants, or reactors: Kerosene is used as jet engine fuel.
why do people insist on nit picking nonsense rather then thinking and logically commenting on an artical?
JCR is right. The difference here is that a fuel source provides both power and reaction mass, whereas the Xenon gas used in an ion engine is only the reaction mass. The power source is something else, presumably a battery.
Michael, you are missing the whole fundamental meaning of the world “fuel”. Ask yourself these questions…
Q1. Does it power an engine?
A. Yes, yes it does.
Q2. DOES IT POWER AN ENGINE???
A. HOLY SHIT, IT DOES.
It could be antimatter for all we care, it is still used to run an engine. There is no argument, period the end! Arguing about this is pointless because… you have to be completely stupid to think of this otherwise.
And Xenon isn’t an energy source. For ion engines, electricity from solar cells is the energy source. Xenon is thrown out the back of the engine by mechanisms powered by that electricity. It is just reaction mass.
One way to think of this is to imagine yourself floating in space in a big coffee can with a pile of rocks next to you. If you throw those rocks out the end of the can one after another, by Newton’s Third Law, the can will begin to accelerate in the opposite direction that you are throwing the rocks.
In this case the rocks are not fuel. Your arm is providing power, it is “powering” your craft. But the rocks provide the reaction mass.
Now imagine that instead of rocks you have a pile of magnets whose poles are forced together and held together with a bit of tape or a small clamp. Instead of throwing them, you simply point one magnet out the end of the can and release the clamp. The repulsive force between the two magnets flings one out the end of the can, resulting in the same opposite-direction acceleration of your little craft.
In this case the magnets are fuel, because half of the magnets are reaction mass, and the stored potential energy in their configuration is the power source. It is not necessary that you use your arm to throw the magnets, and thereby power the craft’s acceleration.
For something like a mission to Saturn, the electric power would have to be provided either via batteries or something like a radioactive isotope with a generator converting the heat from that reaction into electricity. Electric fields are used to ionize the inert xenon gas into separate electrons and ions, and ions and electrons both have electric charge. As a result, they will either be attracted to or repelled by plates of positive or negative charge. So the “power” comes from what is providing the ionization and what is making the plates electrically charged. I prefer to use the term “propellant” for describing the gas being propelled, because it is not chemically reacting to anything, though it is providing a displacement of mass at a certain velocity, which causes a change in momentum for the craft in the opposite direction.
[...] by traditional engines. They might as well be magical for as much as I understand them, and NASA has just upped the magic with their “NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster” or [...]
Come on people, who cares what is considered fuel and what isn’t!
The point is, this thing GOES, GOES FAR, and GOES FAR FOR A LONG TIME.
Be quiet and go back to your mother’s basement, please!
I have a pet theory that engineers are incapable of rational debate. Brian Byrkett, thanks for your support in building evidence for this theory.
I’ve read that arguing on the Internet is like competing in the Special Olympics – even if you win you’re still retarded.
Aside from the argument about what constitutes “fuel”, this is cool stuff. To infinity and beyond!
I built an ion propelled aircraft once out of balsa wood and fine aluminum thread strung in two insulated-from-each other grids on the balsa framework. It’s power source was two TV picture tube anode cables wired in series for high voltage but low amperage. It lifted off the table with a slight downdraft. It won the NASA award at my county science fair…and earned me an A in my physics class in high school that semester. I got the idea from an article in Popular Mechanics magazine in the mid-1960s. The air wasn’t the fuel. The electricity was. The air was the “medium.”
I think you’ll find that I set the thrust record last night.
With your mum.
That is all.
[...] by traditional engines. They might as well be magical for as much as I understand them, and NASA has just upped the magic with their “NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster” or [...]
As a comp-sci major I come into quite a bit of contact with overt geeky-ness, and it is my conclusion that it is not just engineers who cannot have rational arguments but it is more a matter of context.
For this model lets assume “Engineers” represent a wealth of intimate knowledge and a history of rigorous esoteric investigation. We must also define “Norms” (normal people) as people who can comprehend a published material due to a wealth of general knowledge and the articles ability to convey a point.
The Engineers nit-pick because the difference they see between two things is significant, but it is their history that supplies them with this significance. Norms reject this behavior because this behavior is conveyed poorly or to distantly from the comfortable language the article that failed uses.
This is a really unfortunate scinario and I see it every day. I’ve been on both sides, I’ve been livid about some arguments and its important to understand both sides.
It seems to me saying the word fuel is really a mis-nomer. Although fuel conveys the point of Xenon’s purpose very well, along with it, it tells us that Xenon used up. It also induces an anolgistic association with Xenon to ION Engines and Natural Gas to combustion engines. Reaction Mass conveys the variables much better; how-ever reaction mass is uncommon ground for most people (including myself).
As a sum-up thats pretty long, and I apologize for that.
To sum the sum-up, it doesn’t matter whos arguing because most argument is born out of either a small piece of truth or a personal truth. In this case the real truth is calling the Reaction Mass a fuel conveyed a point that discredit the article to one person and that person had shitty enough social skills they got other people with equally shitty social skills on the other side annoyed.
Also long, this time I shrug: *shrug*
thanks jay, as I was reading the comments a similar line of thought came through my mind.The entire argument was based in the word choice of the author.
Words are symbols used to convey meaning. After all thought is chemical reactions words are the medium by which we describe thought so that communicating and transferring similar reactions can occur to another being. The meaning of the words are the most important part, and if you can read the article and realize there is an error in the sent communication and interpret it as it was intended then the communication was still successful and therefore served its purpose.
So ions are not the fuel source, no more than tires are the fuel source for a car, but how many cars do you see without tires. after all fuel is not the difficult thing to obtain energy is rather abundant in our solar system. The tricky part is turning that energy to work. I assume since the article mentioned the crafts ability to scale down usage the further it went from the sun, it is solar powered and the ions are an extremely efficient way to turn solar energy into work.
That of course is just how I interpreted the meaning of the article but I could be wrong, we could all be wrong and we all might be figments of each others imaginations. who knows, and more importantly who cares.
ok, on the “fuel debate,” if it goes in one part of an engine, gets processed by said engine, and leaves as either exhaust or propulsion then it is a fuel. The guy that turns wrench on your car even understands this much. to say otherwise is to say the sun is the moon.
Second, while this technology is exciting for exploration within our solar system, don’t get too excited about catching up to Star Wars any time soon. These give enough thrust to hold up a sheet of paper, not quite enough to thrust a ship to another solar system and have it arrive within our lifetime.
ok seriously….some people have too much time on their hands to argue about something this stupid.
Mike (NOT that other Michael) you get an F for reading comprehension.
While the instantaneous thrust is relatively low, it’s the big picture you need to look at. If you add up all that “small” thrust, you get a “big” over all thrust.
These types of thrusters are already being used, it’s just a matter of time before they are built sturdy enough to run for decades.
I think that we have to put articles such as this into a little more context. At some point all of the information provided had to be broken down by NASA researchers to a news reporter (of some sort). Although this reporter may have been versed in physics/engineering, it had to be ‘dumbed’ down and simplified. We should cut them some slack on pedantic matters and focus on the content of the piece:
It’s too bad that someone thought this was worthy to put on a website subtitled: “You tax dollars hard at waste”. This is a very cool technology which will ultimately provide the world with yet another stepping stone to bigger, better and more efficient technologies. It is a shame that many politicians are trying to reduce NASA’s budget and CERN is practically bankrupt simply because the link between their breakthroughs and commercial uses contains a few hard to follow steps.
LOLOLOL ROFFLE WAFFLES LOL
Fuel, schlemiel, I don’t really care about the terms. I’d like to know if there is a heat by-product. Why, is the engine limited to 450 kg of xenon gas in its lifetime? What wears out? If you place your hand at the rear ,in the particle stream, will you be harmed? What’s the size of this device?
And in closing, those who are involved in this project have just made a quantum leap and are most likely very pleased, congrats to them, and to all please recognize what they’ve done.
Aaah this made me laugh – and not just the geeky comments. I first laughed at the phrase in the article:
“thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction”
Surely the co-pilot (e.g. one of the above geeks), would notice that they are going in the “opposite” direction to where they needed to go?
Of course there would be no sat-nav after a while, so maybe that’s what the issue is.
On a geeky moment, I’ve just thought that everyone thinks of exploring our solar system – i.e. goto Mars and the further planest beyond. Why don’t we go the other way – to the left of the sun. Maybe there is something else there…
I don’t think anyone is ever going to actually talk about the article and only from one comment by JCR… oh well
and yes i realized i’m not talking about the article either :-p
First there was a comment. Then there were replies, not too many further comments, flames and observations.
All because John C Randolph chose to make a ******** comment about an article that attempted to be nothing but informative to the layman.
Gee.
Thanks
John. Well done. Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeee.
I know this is a flame but…..
DH are you serious about the opposite direction part?????????.
Because if you are ……………..
Alright, to clear up the confusion about the “fuel” debate, I will say this.
The term “fuel” was incorrectly used indeed, but this word was chosen because more people can comprehend what the general idea is by using it. People know that the Xenon is entering the engine, being processed in some way, and then exiting the engine. Reaction mass is indeed the correct term for this, but the majority of common society cannot comprehend what this term means. They will think something magical is happening here instead of a simple concept used in an advanced application. Besides, whether fuel was the correct word or not, you still knew what was meant by it.
This is all, stop arguing about dumb things, and go do something productive.
will it power my car?
I’m excited about this. It’s bringing to life the creations of science-fiction writers. It’s an exciting time to be alive.
===================
DH Says:On a geeky moment, I’ve just thought that everyone thinks of exploring our solar system – i.e. goto Mars and the further planest beyond. Why don’t we go the other way – to the left of the sun. Maybe there is something else there…
===================
You do realise that if you go the other way, there’s basically the same thing? The solar system is circular, planets circle around the sun. So, if you go the other way, there’s just the same (orbits of the) planets.
James, it won’t be able to power your car. It would take hours, if not days, to accelerate to a reasonable speed after stopping at a traffic light
The deal with this engine is that you deploy a spaceship using the ion engine in space using a conventional spaceship (like a Space Shuttle), because the ion engine can’t escape the Earth’s gravitational force from Earth’s surface.
Once it’s in space, it turns on the ion engine and it slowly but steadily accelerates to speeds much higher than a conventional spaceship ever could, be it over a relatively long time. The instantaneous thrust an ion engine generates is very low, but once it used up the entire 450 or so kilogrammes after several years, it has produced a much higher total thrust (thus the higher speed) than a conventional engine, which has very high instantaneous thrust, but uses up it’s fuel (several tonnes!) in a few hours, and so, in the end, has less total thrust.
This is going to be lengthy. . .
For everyone who is arguing on the “fuel” subject, I believe the author of the topic was speaking in laymans terms. I think this technology is amazing, and is the next logical step towards achieving interstellar travel. I’m sure as hell not an engineer, technician, mechanic, etc. . . what I am is a stoner, and I SURE AS HELL UNDERSTAND THE ARTICLE unlike some dorks here. As for my responces. . .
Michael – you are absolutely correct, and thanks for putting it in understandable terms for the dorks.
John Smith and Joe – you guys are just too NARROW MINDED and can’t wrap your brains around the subject. Go back and finish grade school.
Jay Mak – I’m in the same boat bro. I tend to be the “mediator” for lots of people.
Cody – That comparison is genious. Gasoline fuels the car and provides the energy, but the tires provide traction which is essential for movement. In space there is no “traction”, so you have to rely on Newtons laws of motion. The ejected gas from the ion engines gives that required “traction” so to speak.
me2 – It is sad that people can’t view this as an astonishing breakthrough in technology. When their grandkids decide to move to mars and they want to go visit for a reunion, maybe then they’ll appreciate it. lmao
CARSON 44 – I was wondering the same things. Judging by the image posted, the bright light indicates that there is indeed heat that is generated as a by-product. That’s my theory. Light has temperature, and is measured by it’s brightness. That heat is expressed in a measurement using kelvin(K). Just look at the HID lamps you buy from Walmart for your car. So. . . . judging by the hue of the output I’d guess that the color temp is approx. 10,000 kelvin. I could be wrong.
DH – Judging by you’re aversion to “geeks”, you must be some football jock that just happened to stumble upon this page. If the ion thrusters are facing out the BACK of the craft, then the opposite direction IS FORWARD!!! Yay, just the direction we need to go!! Also, our planets aren’t alligned in a straight line so depending on where the planets are in their orbit, you can reach ANY OF THEM by going any direction. It so happens that our friends at NASA are smart and tend to do their thing when the planets swing over closer to us. Duh. . .
James – There is a little thing called gravity, and another one called friction. Combined, these nasty little creatures would never allow for feasable use of the ion engine with the auto. Now flying cars like in the movie, “The Fifth Element”, that may be possible in the near future if they can get a substantial ammount of thrust to counteract gravity. Doubtful though. Cool but doubtful. Now the use of magnets in a car and embeded in roads. . .that may give you the necessary lift, and the ion drive your propulsion. EURIKA!! Who says stoners are stupid?????
It wouldn’t be feasable for mass transit, but what about a Trans-Atlantic monorail type transport system or something that only needs to travel in a direct line for long distances?
Newton’s Three Laws of Motion:
I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
II. The relationship between an object’s mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Thus, you have reaction mass. Not fuel.
[...] by yours truly I mention my David Icke dream and then First I talk about NASAs new Ion Engine http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/new-ion-engine-sets-thrust-record/ Then we listen to an excerpt from fox news where the news reporter laughs that there may be animals [...]
BRYAN BYRKETT ….All small minds resort to Name calling when they cannot grasp a simple idea/fact …Xenon is NOT a fuel ! Here it is Simply:a fuel once ignited can sustain itself as it continues to do work. THINK of the Xenon as half a fuel,it cannot work without continuous help of an accelerator (ie:large electric current and magnets) The Two TOGETHER Act as a fuel! It may be a matter of semantics to you,But exactness in words are just as important as Mathmatics when endevering space flight…nuf said
Joris/James
If I understand this technology correctly, it cannot be used to power a vehicle in atmosphere. It can only operate in a vacuum, or at least a very low pressure environment.
fyi, R.