NASA's NEXT Ion Thruster Runs Five and a Half Years Nonstop To Set New Record

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA's NEXT Ion Thruster Runs Five and a Half Years Nonstop To Set New Record

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 27, 2013 @01:02AM from the slow-and-steady-and-breathe-and-good dept.

cylonlover writes "Last December, NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) passed 43,000 hours of operation. But the advanced ion propulsion engine wasn't finished. On Monday, NASA announced that it has now operated for 48,000 hours, or five and a half years, setting a record for the longest test duration of any type of space propulsion system that will be hard to beat."

3 of 184 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Perfect analogy for NASA by h4rr4r · 2013-06-27 01:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

So then those rovers on Mars are figments of my imagination?
Our space program since Apollo has gotten better. Unless you think their is some scientific value in sending humans to play golf on other worlds.
Re:Perfect analogy for NASA by Penguinisto · 2013-06-27 02:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Our space program since Apollo has gotten better. Unless you think their is some scientific value in sending humans to play golf on other worlds.
Laugh and minimize all you want, but the one geologist to land on the Moon managed to learn more (and faster) in his one short trip than all of the Mars rovers combined. Why, you ask? Because he didn't have to waste time looking at a picture and speculating on what a shadow or shape looked like it could be. Instead, he just walked up to an item of interest, looked at it, and was able to discern in seconds something that, well, takes teams of scientists weeks on end to speculate over nowadays.
...then there's that niggling fact that someday, space may be the only habitable home we have left after this one gets wrecked - be it by us or by the first asteroid that decides not to simply pass by. It would be nice to already have the tech to live there - preferably long before we're forced to learn it on a tight schedule.

--
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Re:Distance estimate by abies · 2013-06-27 02:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

Don't know where you got these numbers from, but:
- There is no way this ion engine can produce 0.3g acceleration on 2000kg probe; something is way off.
- in addition to propellant, ion engine requires power - a lot of power ; you need to add weight of nuclear reactor on top of that (which is probably only thing able to produce enough power for long term with small amount of consumable fuel); for 2000N you would need something like 50MW of constant power supply
But yes, if you can create imaginary engine giving you even 0.1g of constant acceleration for spaceship over period of few decades, entire galaxy is yours.