A team led by Anita Sengupta, engineer and member of JPLs advanced propulsion technology group, has kept the Deep Space 1 flight spare ion engine running for 24,750 hours. If it had been an automobile engine instead of an ion engine, and it was driven for 24,750 hours at 80.5 kilometers per hour (50 mph), it would have traveled 1.93 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) without an oil change or tune up. The purpose of the test is to understand how an ion engine wears, and what phenomena contribute to its eventual end of life. With this information, NASA scientists can plan missions better and design improved ion engines.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=9186
Popular Posts
-
I've learned a great many things over the past month... "friends" at work are not neccessarily friends, people you thought wer...
-
Brad Dalton is the first to admit his theory is far-fetched: that bacteria could account for odd light emissions, as well as the reddish hue...
-
Lots of funny stuff today. Tim, check this one. http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3
-
Some interesting tidbits about Lynchs Mulholland Drive , as well as David Bowies next movie apperance. http://www.crowdsurfer.com/index.php3...
-
“We see it doing its thing, starting to fight against ordinary gravity,” Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute said about the ...
-
I'm always fascinated by ways to get stuff done, particularly at work. It's changed quite a bit since I've been in my current r... -
Let me make this clear. This is a long book. Weighing in at just under one thousand pages and probably a pound and a half this book takes ...
-
Looks like a sweet FPS for Linux... and it's team based like Counter Strike. If it's good, Hiyat's going to kill me. It took...
-
Good, good movie in every sense of the term. 8/10. http://www.newvoyages.com
