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Topic: Ion thruster

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Xenon Ion Propulsion System

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	Ion thruster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Ion thrusters are therefore able to achieve high specific impulse, reducing the amount of reaction mass required, but increasing the amount of power required compared to chemical rockets.
		Ion thrusters can deliver one order of magnitude greater propellant efficiency than traditional liquid fuel rocket engines, but are constrained to very low accelerations by the power/weight ratios of available power systems.
		Ion thrusters have to be kept running a large part of the time to allow the milligee acceleration to gain a useful velocity.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ion_thruster (1192 words)

	Electrostatic ion thruster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The electrostatic ion thruster is a kind of design for ion thrusters (a kind of highly-efficient low-thrust spacecraft propulsion running on electrical power).
		Once ions enter the sheath they see the potential between the positive and negative grids at the exit of the chamber, they are electrostatically accelerated away from the positive grid and towards the negative one.
		The chief variable in electrostatic ion thrusters is the method of ionizing the fuel atoms.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Electrostatic_ion_thruster (858 words)

	Ion thruster (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		An ion thruster is a type of spacecraft propulsion that uses beams of ion s for propulsion.
		Ions are accelerated by passing them through highly-charged grids (similar in concept to a vacuum tube).
		Ion engines are best used for missions requiring very high ΔV (the overall change in velocity, taken as a single value), interplanetary missions, for example.
	www.serebella.com /encyclopedia/article-Ion_thruster.html (625 words)

	DST - Precision Thrusters
		Ion thrusters have been developed since the 1960s, and have flown in space for the first time in the early 1970s.
		ion thruster was used as the main propulsion device to fly a spacecraft past the comet “Borrelly”.
		For formation flying applications, however, ion thrusters would be used in a unique attitude control mode, accurately maintaining the relative position of several spacecraft, or the rate at which they are moving with respect to each other.
	dst.jpl.nasa.gov /thrusters/index.htm (924 words)

	Electric Thruster Test and Evaluation
		In a Hall-effect thruster, neutral atoms from a heavy gas such as xenon are ionized by collision with high-energy electrons whose movement is confined by a radial magnetic field.
		Plasma devices generate ions, which are normally fast, and neutral particles, which are normally slow; however, scattering effects produce a degree of homogenization, such that a small percentage of fast ions become slow and slow neutrals become fast (as a result of charge exchange).
		Ion propulsion use by NASA and the military is still in the initial phase.
	www.aero.org /publications/crosslink/fall2005/05.html (3721 words)

	Boeing: Integrated Defense Systems - Satellite Development Center - Xenon Ion Propulsion Center - XIPS: The Latest ...
		The xenon ion propulsion system, or XIPS (pronounced "zips"), is the culmination of nearly four decades of research into the use of electric propulsion as an alternative to conventional chemical propulsion.
		Ions ejected by the Hughes-designed XIPS travel in an invisible stream at a speed of 30 kilometers per second (62,900 miles per hour), nearly 10 times that of its chemical counterpart.
		And, because ion thrusters operate at lower force levels, attitude disturbances during thruster operation are reduced, further simplifying the stationkeeping task.
	www.boeing.com /defense-space/space/bss/factsheets/xips/xips.html (1572 words)

	PEPL Electric Propulsion Thrusters
		Ions (typically Xenon or Krypton) are efficiently produced in a discharge chamber via collisions between neutral atom and energetic electrons generated by a hollow cathode in the discharge chamber.
		The ion beam is "neutralized" by electrons emitted from a second hollow cathode external to the discharge assembly.
		The Linear Gridless Ion Thruster (LGIT) is a two-stage device that is designed to incorporate the efficient ionization process found in gridded ion thrusters with the high thrust density and crossed-field acceleration mechanism of Hall thrusters.
	www.engin.umich.edu /dept/aero/spacelab/thrusters/thrusters.html (819 words)

	The Past and Future of Rocket Engine Propulsion
		An ion thruster such as the NSTAR engine is composed of several subsystems including (figure ES3): the discharge chamber, the discharge cathode assembly (DCA), the grids (also called the ion optics), and the neutralizer.
		Ions created in the discharge chamber enter the holes in the screen grid and are accelerated by the roughly 1,300 V drop in potential established by the two grids.
		The Hall thruster is an electrostatic engine that was developed in the 1960s in both the United States and the Soviet Union to alleviate the thrust density limitation of ion thrusters that results from space-charge effects between the grids.
	www.fathom.com /course/21701743/session6.html (2518 words)

	George Powers
		The ion propulsion thruster pushes its exhaust about 10 times faster than a chemical rocket and when the large solar ray is taken into account, you can fly a spaceship on an interplanetary cruise with much less fuel then the conventional chemical rocket.
		The ion engine, which is sometimes called the electrostatic engine, is the electric system that obtains the highest degree of conversion of electric power into thrust, high exhaust velocity, and the longest operational lifetime.
		Atoms in an ion thruster are charged by electricity and used as a propellant.
	www.oswego.edu /nova/facts/ion/ion.html (2502 words)

	New engine powers a new spaceship
		This ion thruster is not for the impatient since it will take one whole day to accelerate the craft by an additional 30 feet per second -- about as fast as it would accelerate after dropping in Earth's gravity for one second.
		Ions respond to magnetic and electric fields, and these ions are attracted to a positive grid at the back of the firing chamber.
		Instead of increasing F by adding mass, the thruster does the same thing by increasing A, which allows you to reduce M. Aside from the extreme rapidity of the beam, the biggest novelty of an ion thruster is its source of energy.
	whyfiles.org /shorties/ion_thruster.html (1034 words)

	Ion engine passes 8,000-hour endurance test
		Ion propulsion, also known as solar electric propulsion, is set to be used on Deep Space 1 (DS1), the first launch of the New Millennium program, a series of missions designed to test new technologies so that they can be confidently used on science missions of the 21st century.
		Ion propulsion provides only the tiniest amount of thrust, roughly equivalent to the pressure of a single sheet of paper held in the palm of the hand - approximately 10,000 times smaller than the thrust of the main engines on typical planetary spacecraft.
		While the ions are fired in great numbers out the thruster at more than 100,000 kilometers (68,000 miles) per hour, their mass is so low that the engine produces an exquisitely gentle thrust of only 90 millinewtons (20-thousandsths of a pound).
	www.jpl.nasa.gov /releases/97/ioneng2.html (746 words)

	GRC - NSTAR Ion Thruster
		The flight thruster and PPU design requirements were derived with the aid of about 50 development tests and a series of wear-tests at NASA GRC and JPL of 2000 hours, 1000 hours, and 8193 hours using engineering model thrusters.
		The thruster cable mass was 0.95 kg, and the PPU cable mass was 0.77 kg.
		Thrusters and PPUs were manufactured for NASA GRC by Hughes, and the DCIU was built by Spectrum Astro, Inc. The feed system development was a collaborative effort between JPL and Moog, Inc.
	www.grc.nasa.gov /WWW/ion/past/90s/nstar.htm (436 words)

	Ion Propulsion
		Ions are particles carrying negative or positive electrical charges that are attracted to each other.
		It is this characteristic of ions that is used to propel a rocket.
		Ion drive ships are still used by some deep space travelling daughter clades of the original Space Adapted Human, especially the Imirodi Clade in the vicinity of Groombridge 34Aa, Ross 248, and Kruger 60 A, and also the Zain Beta Clade of the 36 Ophiuchi4 / C - CD-32 13297 - CD-34 11626 region.
	www.orionsarm.com /ships/ion.html (764 words)

	[No title]
		These ions are then accelerated out through many small holes in the screen and accelerator electrode to form an ion beam.
		These include colloid thrusters using a doped-glycerine propellant, a pulsed-plasma thruster using ablation of a Teflon propellant block (ref. 2), and a bombardment thruster using cesium propellant.
		The T-4 thruster is a 10-millinewton (2.2mlb) thruster proposed as one of two possible ion thrusters to be flight tested by the European Space Agency in late 1980.
	www.textfiles.com /bbs/KEELYNET/GRAVITY/ion1.asc (607 words)

	contact ion thruster
		A form of electrostatic propulsion in which ions are produced on a heated surface and then accelerated in an electric field to produce a high-speed exhaust.
		Of the two types of ion propulsion that have been studied thoroughly over the past four decades – the other being the electron bombardment thruster – it has so far proved much the less useful for practical use in space.
		The difficulty is that the only propellant that has been shown to work in the contact ion method is cesium, because only cesium atoms have an outer (valence) electron that can be removed when the atoms are adsorbed onto the surface of a suitable metal, such as tungsten.
	www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/C/contactionthruster.html (209 words)

	Closed loop solar array-ion thruster system with power control circuitry - Patent 4143314
		A further thruster system of interest is the 30-cm diameter mercury bombardment ion thruster presently under development by the Lewis Research Center and discussed in Schnelker, D. and Collett, C. R.: "30-cm Engineering Model Thruster Design and Qualification Tests", AIAA Paper 75-341, March, 1975.
		Generally speaking, the thruster beam current is adjusted so that the solar array always operates at the maximum power point, the maximum power point being determined by using the thruster to slightly perturb the array and thus obtain small changes in power.
		According to a preferred embodiment, the power control circuit is connected between the solar array and the ion thruster and receives signals from said solar array corresponding to the solar array current and the solar array voltage.
	www.freepatentsonline.com /4143314.html (3732 words)

	Field-emission ion source and ion thruster apparatus comprising such sources - Patent 4328667
		A field-emission ion source in which, under the influence of an electric field, ions are released from a metal or metal alloy present in an enclosed space in the liquid state.
		A field-emission ion source as claimed in claim 1, wherein said housing comprises a hollow cylindrical outer housing member closed on one side by a bottom, and a second cylindrical housing member provided within said outer housing member to form a hollow space, there being provided an annular discharge slit between the two housing members.
		A field-emission ion source as claimed in claim 2, in which the outer walls of the two housing bodies are provided on opposite sides of the discharge slits with a coating suitable to prevent undesirable propellant creeping.
	www.freepatentsonline.com /4328667.html (2898 words)

	Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Ion thrusters are high efficiency, low thrust propulsion for spacecraft.
		Ion thrusters consist of a discharge chamber, ion optics (or grids), and a neutralizer cathode.
		If ions and/or neutrals are not modeled as particles, then the CEX collision rate is calculated using ion and neutral densities at a given point.
	www-personal.engin.umich.edu /~jemhoff/research/ionthrusters.html (1043 words)

	JPL News -- Ion Engine Under Consideration for Jupiter Mission Passes Test
		Ion engines used on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft would draw their power from an on-board space nuclear reactor.
		The ion engines, or electric thrusters, would propel the orbiter around each of the icy worlds orbiting Jupiter -- Ganymede, Callisto and Europa -- to conduct extensive, close-range exploration of their makeup, history and potential for sustaining life.
		The test was conducted on December 12, in the same vacuum chamber at JPL where earlier this year, the Deep Space 1 flight spare ion thruster set the all time endurance record of 30,352 hours (nearly 3.5 years) of continuous operation.
	www.jpl.nasa.gov /releases/2003/173.cfm (849 words)

	Yorkshire CND - Ion Engine Design Passes Key Test - 30/12/03
		The ion engines, or electric thrusters, would propel the orbiter around three of the icy moons orbiting Jupiter, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, to conduct extensive, close-range examinations and to determine their potential for sustaining life.
		It used the same vacuum chamber, where the Deep Space 1 ion thruster set the all time endurance record of 30,352 hours (nearly 3.5 years) of continuous operation.
		"The NEXIS thruster is a larger, high performance descendant of the Deep Space 1 thruster that achieves its extraordinary life by replacing the metal, previously used in key components, with advanced, carbon based materials," said Tom Randolph, NEXIS program manager at JPL.
	www.cndyorks.gn.apc.org /yspace/articles/ion_engine_test.htm (672 words)

	- Solar Thruster Sailor (STS) - a huge solar sail with ion-thruster-ring-skeleton
		The Solar Thruster Sailor as a mother carrier ship provides cheap transportation through the possibility to hold a huge free photonic thrust producing sail (and therefor saving fuel mass and costs) with the ability to carry a lot of payload combined with the secure docking ability for also highly steerable Thruster-Ring daughter units.
		using Mini-STS Solar Thruster Sailors (solar sails which are compounding solar sail with ion thruster propulsion) to retrieve samples of asteroid regolith to land on one or several asteroids, drill asteroidal sample cores and bringing them back to earth or to the ISS for analysation.
		Since the lower weight of the thrusters would be substantial this solar sails could be even smaller than the Mini STS or they could move faster.
	solar-thruster-sailor.info /sts/sts.htm (4406 words)

	Spaceflight Now \| Breaking News \| Next-generation ion engine development begins
		The first phase is a one-year effort to design, build and test initial versions of ion thrusters, propellant feed systems and power processing units, which convert solar array power into forms useful for the ion engine.
		The new ion thruster development program builds on the success of the Deep Space 1 mission, a NASA probe launched in 1998 to validate advanced flight technologies.
		Deep Space 1 was powered by an ion thruster just 12 inches in diameter, which accelerated the spacecraft to a velocity of 7,900 mph over a 20-month period.
	www.spaceflightnow.com /news/n0206/30ionengine (1040 words)

	SPACE.com -- Europe's SMART-1 Lunar Probe Ignites Ion Engine
		Not as powerful as the ion drives of science fiction, this ion thruster uses electricity from solar arrays to charge a stream of xenon gas.
		The benefit of the ion thruster over conventional chemical rocket engines is that an ion engine can be left on for days and weeks at a time, providing a constant acceleration to the spacecraft with much less energy.
		For SMART-1 the slow process of raising its orbit with its ion thruster will continue for some 18 months until it reaches a point in space where the Moon's gravity will capture the probe and slingshot it into a lunar orbit.
	www.space.com /missionlaunches/smart1_ion_031001.html (626 words)

	JPL Work on Russian Thrusters - JPL Universe (16-Dec-94)
		Loral is interested in using the thrusters on its commercial communications satellites and the stated goals of the BMDO- sponsored test are sufficient, Brophy said, to demonstrate 15 years of on-orbit satellite operations.
		The company wanted to further demonstrate the thruster's reliability to its potential commercial spacecraft customers by demonstrating that the thruster could operate for 150 percent of the required mission duration with using only one of the thruster's two cathodes.
		The test substantially exceeded the Russian experience with this thruster, and a representative of Fakel Design Bureau, the Russian manufacturer of the thruster, came to JPL in November to inspect the device.
	www.islandone.org /Propulsion/RussianThrusters.html (886 words)

	Spacecraft (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		It also uses ion propulsion to spiral to lower altitudes on Vesta, to leave Vesta and cruise to Ceres and to spiral to a low altitude orbit at Ceres.
		Ion propulsion makes efficient use of the onboard fuel by accelerating it to a velocity ten times that of chemical rockets.
		The ion thruster is powered by large solar panels.
	dawn.jpl.nasa.gov /mission/ion_prop.asp (195 words)

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