NEXT (ion thruster)

Image of NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) operation in vacuum chamber

The NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) project at Glenn Research Center is a gridded electrostatic ion thruster about three times as powerful as the NSTAR used on Dawn and Deep Space 1 spacecraft.[1][2] It was used in DART, launched in 2021.

Glenn Research Center manufactured the test engine's core ionization chamber, and Aerojet Rocketdyne designed and built the ion acceleration assembly.[3][4]

  1. ^ George R Schmidt; Michael J Patterson; Scott W Benson. "The NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT): the next step for US deep space propulsion" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-05-18.
  2. ^ Herman, Daniel A. (May 3–7, 2010), "NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project Qualification Propellant Throughput Milestone: Performance, Erosion, and Thruster Service Life Prediction After 450 kg" (PDF), 57th Joint Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force (JANNAF) Propulsion Meeting, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA: NASA - Glenn Research Center, retrieved 2014-03-08
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference test was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ NASA Thruster Achieves World-Record 5+Years of Operation. NASA. June 24, 2013.