Sacramento, Calif.-based Aerojet said June 29 that a xenon ion engine developed in partnership with NASA’s Glenn Research Center has surpassed 30,000 hours of operation in ground tests at the ...

Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE:GY) company, announced today that its innovative ion propulsion engine – built in partnership between Aerojet and NASA’s Glenn Research Center – has completed a test series ...

Aerojet has completed manufacture and integration testing of a xenon propellant management system (PMS) for phase one of NASA's evolutionary xenon thruster (NEXT) next-generation ion engine ...

The Dawn mission to the asteroid belt passed a critical test last weekend, exercising its gentle, yet reliable, ion-propulsion system to accelerate its mission to two destinations during an eight-year ...

Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at CNET. She covered climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical ...

Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in a new window) Share on Reddit (opens in a new window) Share on Hacker News (opens in a new window) Share on Flipboard (opens in a new ...

Today, we use ion thrusters to correct satellite orbits and visit asteroids. In 100 years, we might be using them to propel massive generation ships that send colonists to a different part of the ...

Engineers assemble the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) before it begins its 5.5-year endurance test. The thruster generates small amounts of thrust using xenon gas that is ionized and ...

Modern spacecraft use a majority of their fuel supplies just to break away from the Earth’s gravity and actually get into space. But a new NASA proposal hopes to cut that fuel requirement in half by ...

While ion thrusters are a promising propulsion method for future spacecraft, their working life is limited by the amount of propellant they can carry. Now, scientists at ESA and Italian space company ...