Ion engine enters space race (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News

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This laboratory in a leafy part of Hampshire is where defence and security firm Qinetiq develops and tests its ion engines - a technology that will take spacecraft to the planets, powered by the Sun.

Ion engines are an "electric propulsion system". They make use of the fact that a current flowing across a magnetic field creates an electric field directed sideways to the current.

This is used to accelerate a beam of ions (charged atoms) of xenon away from the spacecraft, thereby providing thrust.
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Various types of ion engine have been used before on only a handful of space missions, including Smart-1, the European mission to the Moon, and Nasa's Deep Space 1, which flew by a comet.
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Qinetiq gets to test its T5 engine for real this summer, when Goce is launched from the Russian space port of Plesetsk. It will go up on the same type of rocket that failed three years ago, destroying Europe's Cryosat ice mission.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7346789.stm

[msongs]

1. how long before this gets turned into a super weapon, maybe on blackwater gunships? nt

[Johonny]

4. never

The Ion engine makes for a pretty crappy weapon

[Captain Angry]

2. I'm waiting for the Twin Ion Engines.

I'd make a fighter with them.

Yes, I am a nerd. :-)

[Angleae]

3. May the schwartz be with you.

[Canuckistanian]

5. I remember hearing about "ion engines" when I was a kid

Good to see it's now a reality, unlike the promised "personal helicopter"

[Solon]

6. Already implemented by both NASA and Russia...

NASA's first space based probe with Ion engines was Deep Space 1. Russia specializes in a slightly different type of plasma engine that similar in that its electrical and ionizes the propellant, and is working with NASA on implementing it.