{"id":19400,"date":"2016-04-21T20:26:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T12:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/job-one-for-aerojets-future-ion-drive-go-out-and-get-a-piece-of-an-asteroid\/"},"modified":"2016-04-21T20:26:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T12:26:03","slug":"job-one-for-aerojets-future-ion-drive-go-out-and-get-a-piece-of-an-asteroid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/job-one-for-aerojets-future-ion-drive-go-out-and-get-a-piece-of-an-asteroid\/","title":{"rendered":"Job One for Aerojet\u2019s future ion drive: Go out and get a piece of an asteroid"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_245446\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-245446\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-245446 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/160421-propel2-300x272.jpg\" alt=\"Ion drive\" width=\"300\" height=\"272\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/160421-propel2-300x272.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/160421-propel2-630x572.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/160421-propel2.jpg 870w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-245446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s concept shows a space probe powered by ion thrusters. (Credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Aerojet Rocketdyne\u2019s next-generation&nbsp;ion thrusters&nbsp;could well make&nbsp;their&nbsp;debut in space during&nbsp;NASA\u2019s robotic mission to grab a piece of an asteroid and bring it back to lunar orbit in the 2020s.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, NASA announced that Aerojet\u2019s operation in Redmond, Wash., would be getting in on a 36-month, $67 milllion contract to develop a high-power electric propulsion system for future spacecraft. Today, NASA officials explained what the system would be used for.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBasically, we\u2019re building a whole new drive train for deep-space exploration,\u201d Bryan Smith, director of NASA\u2019s Space Flight Systems Directorate at Glenn Research Center in Ohio, told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>Engineers at the Ohio center have been working on electric propulsion technology since the 1950s, and low-power ion thrusters have been used on probes such as the Dawn spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Ceres. Such thrusters use solar-generated electrical power to accelerate xenon ions to incredibly high speed.<\/p>\n<p>The thrust amounts to&nbsp;just a whisper&nbsp;\u2013 roughly equivalent to the weight of a piece of paper pressing down on your hand. But over time, the acceleration can build&nbsp;up to more than 200,000 mph.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s ion thrusters reach a power level of 4.5 kilowatts in space operations, and around 12.5 kilowatts in the lab. Aerojet is tasked with developing a 50- to&nbsp;100-kilowatt system that puts thrusters together to provide the oomph required to get to an asteroid or Mars.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Countdown to Mars: Solar Electric Propulsion\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tfz1x4ioCpc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA\u2019s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said the first in-space test of the system could well come during the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission. ARRM\u2019s goal is to go out in 2020 or 2021, snatch&nbsp;a boulder from a near-Earth asteroid, and deliver it to lunar orbit in 2025 or 2026 for study by a crew of astronauts.<\/p>\n<p>The mission is expected to yield deeper insights into what asteroids are made of, what it would require to divert a potentially threatening asteroid, and how the technology could work to send payloads to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Despite what you see in the \u201cStar Wars\u201d movies, ion drives aren\u2019t that great for sending humans through deep space. They\u2019re not powerful enough to send a crew into space straight from an earthly launch pad, and they build up speed too slowly. Smith estimated that it might take two years for a spacecraft driven by electric propulsion to get to Mars, compared with nine months using chemical propulsion systems.<\/p>\n<p>But the slow buildup isn\u2019t as much of an issue for cargo shipments, and Aerojet\u2019s ion thrusters&nbsp;are&nbsp;projected&nbsp;to be 10 times as fuel-efficient as today\u2019s chemical thrusters. That means less fuel mass would be needed to send equivalent payloads to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>After the launch to an asteroid, the electric propulsion system could next&nbsp;come&nbsp;into play for sending a telecommunication orbiter to Mars in the 2022 time frame, Jurczyk&nbsp;said. Another potential application&nbsp;would be to send a probe to Mars, pick up a sample of rocks and soil, and return the sample to Earth&nbsp;\u2013 an idea that NASA and its partners have been talking about for more than a decade.<\/p>\n<p>NASA is making its own research into electric propulsion available to all comers, but Aerojet\u2019s work is likely to bring the company long-term commercial benefit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe plans for Aerojet Rocketdyne are to productize what they develop for us, and then sell it as a propulsion system option for spacecraft developers and spacecraft systems integrators, for NASA missions, missions for other government agencies or for missions for commercial applications,\u201d Jurczyk&nbsp;told GeekWire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s concept shows a space probe powered by ion thrusters. (Credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne) Aerojet Rocketdyne\u2019s next-generation&nbsp;ion thrusters&nbsp;could well make&nbsp;their&nbsp;debut in space during&nbsp;NASA\u2019s robotic mission to grab a piece of an asteroid and bring it back to lunar orbit in the 2020s. Earlier this week, NASA announced that Aerojet\u2019s operation in Redmond, Wash., would be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[864,1775,190],"class_list":["post-19400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aerojet-rocketdyne","tag-electric-propulsion","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}