While the Dawn spacecraft is visiting the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, NASA Glenn has been developing the next generation of ion thrusters for future missions. NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project has developed a 7-kilowatt ion thruster that can provide the capabilities needed in the future.
An ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, but does so at higher specific impulse (or higher exhaust velocities), which means that an ion thruster has a fuel efficiency of 10-12 times greater than a chemical thruster. The higher the rocket's specific impulse (fuel efficiency), the farther the spacecraft can go with a given amount of fuel. Given that an ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, it needs to operate in excess of 10,000 hours to slowly accelerate the spacecraft to speeds necessary to reach the asteroid belt or beyond.
The NEXT ion thruster has been operated for over 43,000 hours, which for rocket scientists means that the thruster has processed over 770 kilograms of xenon propellant and can provide 30 million-newton-seconds of total impulse to the spacecraft. This demonstrated performance permits future science spacecraft to travel to varied destinations, such as extended tours of multi-asteroids, comets, and outer planets and their moons.
While the Dawn spacecraft is visiting the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, NASA Glenn has been developing the next generation of ion thrusters for future missions. NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project has developed a 7-kilowatt ion thruster that can provide the capabilities needed in the future.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2416.html#.UhLgH2Trc4w
Image Credit: NASA
Comments
Byron, in this site I've learned about NASA a lot. I brought this article because I think they are allready using this technology for a long time, or as you said, even a more advanced one.
And don't worry, I don't take to heart the responces, I knew they will be like this.
Mariana take a trip down this road https://earthchanges.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-secret-space-progra... I know you are from another country and probably don't know how much NASA lies to us probably everyday, so don't take our negative comments to heart. The American motto for NASA is Never A Straight Answer. While we try so hard to learn about the solar system the just feed us garbage.
We already have technology far surpasses this is only a game to squander more money from us unsuspecting useless eaters. How about taking care of the problems on this planet before we go thrusting off into space where we have already been for decades spend it on fixing what is wrong with the world and its people.