Originally published February 23 2006
New ion engine promises fuel efficiency
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to tests by the European Space Agency, the ion engine could have up to 10 times the fuel efficiency of existing electric propulsion engines. The new design produces much faster ion exhaust plumes without damage to the engine.
A new design for an ion engine promises up to 10 times the fuel-efficiency of existing electric propulsion engines, according to tests by the European Space Agency.
The new thruster could be used to propel craft into interstellar space, or to power a crewed mission to Mars, ESA says.
Ion engines work by using an electric field to accelerate a beam of positively charged particles -- ions -- away from the spacecraft, thereby providing propulsion.
Existing models, such as the engine used in ESA's Moon mission, SMART-1, extract the ions from a reservoir and expel them in a single process.
Tests on a prototype called the Dual-Stage 4-Grid (DS4G) thruster, at ESA's Electric Propulsion Laboratory in the Netherlands showed that DS4G's two-step process produces an ion exhaust plume that travelled at 210 kilometres per second -- more than 10 times faster than possible with the engine in SMART-1, and four times faster than the latest prototype ion engine designs.
"Crewed or heavyweight robotic missions to Mars become a distinct possibility.
The conventional ion engine contains three grids perforated with thousands of millimetre-wide holes.
This voltage difference creates an electric field, which extracts the ions from the fuel reservoir and accelerates them out into space in one step.
The third grid acts to stop electrons flying back into the ion beam.
Ideally, the voltage difference between the first two grids should be as high as possible, to maximise the speed at which the ions are expelled, and also the fuel efficiency of the engine.
But when the difference approaches 5000 volts, ions collide with the second grid, and start to erode it.
The final, low-voltage stage, between the third and fourth grids, prevents electrons from the exhaust plume from flying backwards.
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