NASA Thruster Sets a New Record of 5+ Years Continuous Operation!

You read right, NASA has had an ION engine running non stop for 48,000+ hours which works out to 5 plus years of operation.  NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster project at Glenn Research Center is responsible for this extraordinary engine's core ionization chamber and  Aerojet Rocketdyne  designed and built the ion acceleration assembly.  

NASA says that the 7 kilo-watt engine can be used in a variety of projects such as deep space missions where weight is a premium.  One innovation comes in the shape of it's electric thruster unit which is powered by solar electricity which make it possible to accelerate xenon atoms  to speeds of up to 90,000 mph without the need of a reactor to generate the electric field.  

There isn't any doubt that the ION engine is hugely efficient and the NEXT engine, during it's 5 year run,  consumed apx 1,918 pounds of xenon fuel.  Less than a ton of fuel for 5 years of constant acceleration! 

Of course the pay back is what this type of engine is best at, acceleration.  The impulse may be slight, it is additive.  An engine, such as a variation on the NEXT,  under constant operation is capable of reaching speeds that would be an appreciable fraction of C, but even the present impulse of NEXT is remarkable.  

More @ Wikipedia.org and the NASA article

New ION Engine Passes 200KW

In a NewScientist article sent in by Shaun Saunders we read about the world's most powerful ion engine developed by the Ad Astra Rocket Company of Webster, Texas. Astra has run their new engine at full power for the first time. In a recent test, the company's VX-200 engine powered to 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time.

One of the near future uses for this new engine would be to provide periodic boosts to the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS). a scaled up version ( in the 10 to 20 megawatts power range) could power astronauts to Mars in as little as 39 days vs the 6 months or longer it would take now.

One of the first order gains from these types of engines is their efficiency. Ion engines are about 25 times more efficient than conventional rocket engines. Though not strong enough to launch to orbit, the real savings would be realized when maneuvering in Earth orbit.