The world's first
electric ion thruster is now ready to be used for longer human missions, thanks to a team at the European Space Agency.
Not exact matches
The most established
electric propulsion concepts, for example gridded -
ion thrusters, accelerate and emit a larger number of positively charged particles than those with negative charge.
Mature
electric propulsion devices such as
ion engines, hall
thrusters and magnetoplasmadynamic
thrusters have electrodes exposed to the plasmas.
Two types of
electric rockets are currently in use: the
ion thruster, which generates thrust using a beam of positive xenon
ions, and the Hall
thruster, which uses xenon
ions and electrons for propulsion.