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    NASA’s most metal mission will test new, higher-power electric thrusters

    Electric thrusters will power the craft in space. It allows for a smaller and cheaper space craft than if using chemical propulsion.


    NASA’s most metal mission will test new, higher-power electric thrusters

    A satellite company named Maxar recently delivered a passenger van-sized chunk of spacecraft to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. This chassis will serve as the backbone for a robotic spacecraft that will explore a metallic asteroid for the first time. This ambitious mission, named Psyche after the eponymous asteroid it will explore, is due to launch next summer on a Falcon Heavy rocket.

    Once in space, the spacecraft will use an innovative means of propulsion, known as Hall thrusters, to reach the asteroid. This will be the first time a spacecraft has ventured into deep space using Hall thrusters, and absent this technology, the Psyche mission probably wouldn't be happening—certainly not at its cost of just less than $1 billion.
    Electric propulsion

    Engines powered by chemical propulsion are great for getting rockets off the surface of the Earth when you need a brawny burst of energy to break out of the planet's gravitational well. But chemical rocket engines are not the most fuel-efficient machines in the world, as they guzzle propellant. And once a spacecraft is in space, there are more fuel-efficient means of moving around.


    One of these is solar electric propulsion, which uses solar panels to capture energy from the Sun, which in turn ionizes and accelerates a gas—typically xenon—to produce a thrust. It's not much of a thrust. Actually, it's exceptionally light. Each of the thrusters on the Psyche mission maxes out at about the same force as that exerted by two or three quarters in the palm of one's hand. But because they are so fuel-efficient, solar electric thrusters don't burn for a few minutes at a time. They burn for months, producing a steady acceleration.
    The mission

    If NASA had tried to develop the Psyche mission with chemical propulsion, it would have required about five times as much fuel. This bulk would have caused Psyche to be even larger than the Cassini probe that NASA used to explore the Saturn system from 2004 to 2017, Oh said. The Cassini mission cost about $4 billion, the kind of budget that NASA reserves only for the highest-priority "flagship" missions. NASA only flies one or two of these a decade, and the scientists behind Psyche, led by Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University, knew they weren't going to obtain this designation.


    Using Hall thruster-based technology enabled the mission's scientists and engineers to design a smaller and more affordable spacecraft. Critically, NASA was able to buy a spacecraft chassis from Maxar that was built largely from commercial, off-the-shelf technology. Had NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed to develop this technology on their own, it would have cost billions of dollars and taken years longer.


    Each of the Hall thrusters on Psyche will generate three times as much thrust as the ion thrusters on the Dawn spacecraft and can process twice as much power. This will allow the spacecraft to reach the Psyche asteroid, located in the main belt, in January 2026, after a 3.5-year journey.
    Read the entire article at the link.
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