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starship-design: [Fwd: Deep Space 1 Mission Status]



Good stuff, huh?


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Deep Space 1 Mission Status
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 23:06:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: JPLNews@jpl.nasa.gov
Reply-To: news-owner@www.jpl.nasa.gov
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MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

                 Deep Space 1 Mission Status
                     April 4, 2001

     The innovative engine now propelling NASA's Deep Space 1 
spacecraft toward its ambitious September encounter with Comet 
Borrelly just won't give up, having now run for more than 
10,000 hours -- 50 times beyond its originally required 
lifetime.

     A working replica of the Deep Space 1 ion engine has 
logged in even more hours at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
Pasadena, Calif., where the mission is managed.
  
     The spacecraft's engine was only required to complete 200 
hours of operation in flight to prove itself a success. On 
March 21, it passed the 10,000-hour mark. It's expected to 
pass 14,000 hours by the end of its extended mission to Comet 
Borrelly.

     The ion engine works by first removing an electron from 
the gas xenon, then using a pair of electrically charged grids 
to shoot the ionized gas out at more than 35,000 meters per 
second (78,000 miles per hour).  The engine is one of a dozen 
important new technologies that the successful Deep Space 1 
mission officially finished testing in 1999. Now that Deep 
Space 1 has been approved for a risky extended mission to 
Comet Borrelly, the long-lived ion engine will take the 
spacecraft near the comet. Similar ion engines may be used on 
future space missions, particularly missions to comets and 
asteroids where the ion engine's high fuel economy is 
important for precise navigation to the small bodies.

     "The ground-based xenon ion engine has run for about 
15,500 hours of testing time since the test began in early 
October 1998," said Dr. John Anderson of JPL, the ion engine 
test lead engineer. "That's more than 150 percent of the time 
it was designed to last."

     "The results from Deep Space 1 and testing on the ground 
show that ion engines can be terrifically effective," said 
JPL's Dr. Marc Rayman, the project manager of Deep Space 1.  
"Now I'm looking forward to future spacecraft that use ion 
engines surpassing Deep Space 1's record as they undertake 
still more exciting missions."  

     Engineers partly attribute the secrets to the ion 
engine's long life to a slight increase in the flow of xenon 
through the engine early in the testing phase. "This reduced 
the amount of wear on the engine, and yet didn't significantly 
affect the engine's efficiency," said Dr. John Brophy, manger 
of NASA's Solar Electric Propulsion Technology Applications 
Readiness project.

     Anderson began testing the ground-based ion engine when 
it was shipped to JPL from Hughes, which is now part of 
Boeing, in 1998. "We'd like to test it until the end of its 
life. Then we'll see how to make these engines last even 
longer," he said.  He had also tested an earlier version of 
the ion engine, beginning in 1996.

     The ion engine is tested for about 75 percent of the time 
over the two and a half years of the test, Anderson said, with 
other time spent on running diagnostic tests, and defrosting 
the xenon propellant that had become frozen in the vacuum 
system. At first, the engine was run at just more than half of 
its capacity, about 1.5 kilowatts, and then upped to full 
capacity, 2.3 kilowatts. The next phase of the test will be to 
run the engine at its lowest thrust level to demonstrate the 
engine's ability to run at low power near the end of its life, 
Anderson said.

     Deep Space 1 has operated its ion engine between 520 
watts and 1.9 kilowatts, in part depending upon the 
spacecraft's distance from the Sun during its flight in space. 
Deep Space 1's ion engine now also helps the spacecraft 
maintain its orientation relative to the stars, so it remains 
on for 99 percent of the time.

     Deep Space 1 was launched in October 1998 as part of 
NASA's New Millennium Program, which is managed by JPL for 
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The 
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for 
NASA. 

     More information can be found on the Deep Space 1 home 
page at http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/ .
                           
                       #####

04/04/01 MJH
#2001-074

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