Photo courtesy NASAThis image of a xenon ion engine, photographed through a port of the vacuum chamber where it was being tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows the faint blue glow of charged atoms being emitted from the engine. The ion propulsion engine is the first non-chemical propulsion to be used as the primary means of propelling a spacecraft.
From The Telegraph:
The solar electric propulsion systems – or ion engines - which will power the next generation of spacecraft to Mercury and beyond are ten times more efficient than conventional rocket engines.
In an ion engine the gas xenon is pumped through a chamber where xenon atoms are stripped of an electron, becoming electrically charged ions, and drift towards two grids a millimetre apart.
The grids are fed with two thousand volts – in space this power will come from paper-thin solar panels spanning 26m. As the ions pass through the electrified grids they accelerate to up to 50km a second and shoot from the rear in a parallel beam.
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