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 by Staff Writers Washington DC (SPX) Mar 19, 2020
After undergoing a series of performance and environmental tests, NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster - Commercial (NEXT-C) is being prepared for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission, which will launch next year. In the past few months, the thruster, developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and designed and built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, was put through vibration, thermal vacuum and performance tests and then integrated with its power processing unit. The environmental testing verified that NEXT-C could withstand the extreme launch vibrations and temperatures of spaceflight. DART will be the first space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impact, a technique that could prevent a hazardous asteroid from impacting Earth by changing the motion of the asteroid in space. NEXT-C's propulsion system will be tested on that mission, along with several other technologies. When the propulsion system is successfully demonstrated on DART, NEXT-C will be considered on a variety of 10 to 15 year-long, uncrewed missions that could include going to other asteroids, comets or planets such as Venus.
Iodine as alternative propellant for electric propulsion Friedrichshafen, Germany (SPX) Mar 16, 2020 iFACT (iodine Fed Advanced Cusp field Thruster) project was successfully launched in Friedrichshafen, Germany in January 2020. Funded by the European Commission as part of its Horizon 2020 Programme, the 2M euro project will run for 24 months. iFACT aims to further develop iodine as alternative propellant for electric propulsion by creating a European ground test infrastructure, further development of the Advanced Cusp Field Thruster (ACFT) principle, and generating a detailed iodine - material co ... read more
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