Loaded with 922 kg of xenon propellant, engineers have estimated that ... being fitted with three of the same xenon ion thrusters used on the Deep Space 1 program, though only firing one at ...

While these massive devices are marvels of human engineering, the real workhorses of the space industry are the immensely ...

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain in space ... on Wednesday. Engineers are troubleshooting thruster troubles and helium leaks on the ...

Predicting the lifetime of an electric ion thruster is notoriously difficult. You have to account for the chamber wall effects, which are not present in space environments. Researchers within ...

A Hall thruster is a high-efficiency propulsion device using plasma that is used for various difficult space missions ... the research and development of ion beam sources used in various ...

The DLR-Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology performs a lifetime qualification test of ArianeGroup’s radio frequency gridded ion thruster RIT2x in the Electric Space Propulsion Test Facility ...

A research team presents an AI assessor for Hall-effect ion thrusters, the engines of satellites and space probes. Hall thrusters, a key space technology for missions like SpaceX's Starlink ...

The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California ... satellites to utilize their ion thrusters in an attempt to raise their orbits.

Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object traveling through interstellar space, encountered ... contact with Earth, NASA engineers had to switch to a backup thruster system, carefully ...