Ion Drive Restarted Options

[Palomar]

After 5-month hiatus

*...the ion drive has been "nominally" restarted.

The EP power is being set to 1325W due to the Sun distance seasonal effect.

The EP operations are planned to last until mid September assuming simulator behaviour. The second half of September has been reserved for possible special operations in case the engine does not behave as expected.

Also lists future activities and gives a rundown on status. All is well, it seems. Includes photo of the ion drive and its "exhaust."

[Toma B]

Amazing!!! Well done!!!

The test model achieved voltage differences as high as 30kV and produced an ion exhaust plume that travelled at 210,000 m/s, over four times faster than state-of-the-art ion engine designs achieve.
This makes it four times more fuel efficient, and also enables an engine design which is many times more compact than present thrusters, allowing the design to be scaled up in size to operate at high power and thrust.
Due to the very high acceleration, the ion exhaust plume was very narrow, diverging by only 3 degrees, which is five times narrower than present systems.
This reduces the fuel needed to correct the orientation of spacecraft from small uncertainties in the thrust direction.