Ion thruster
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An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. An ion thruster creates a cloud of positive ions from a neutral gas by ionizing it to extract
The 2.3 kW NSTAR ion thruster developed by NASA for the Deep Space 1 spacecraft during a hot fire test at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1999)
NEXIS ion engine test (2005)
SERT-1 spacecraft
Thruster components
Hall-effect thruster
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In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster is a type of ion thruster in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Based on the discovery by Edwin Hall, Hall-effect thrusters use
Ion thruster
…Voskhod 1 carried out tests with ion thrusters that had been attached to the exterior of the spacecraft. An alternate form of electric propulsion, the Hall-effect thruster, was studied independently in the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. Hall-effect thrusters operated on Soviet satellites from…
6 kW Hall thruster in operation at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Soviet and Russian SPT thrusters
Hall-effect thruster module with propellant tank and control unit visible.
An Exotrail ExoMG – nano (60 W) Hall Effect Thruster firing in a vacuum chamber