the.com/ion drive
glacially slow acceleration that eventually outruns chemical rockets and forgets to stop
means A spacecraft propulsion system that accelerates electrically charged atoms (ions) and shoots them out as exhaust, producing a tiny but extremely efficient thrust sustained over long periods.
from Built from two pieces. "Ion" was coined in the 1830s by chemist Michael Faraday, who needed a word for the charged particles that drift through a solution during electrolysis; he borrowed the Greek "ion," meaning "going" or "that which goes" (from "ienai," to go) — a fitting name for something that travels toward an electrode. "Drive" is plain old English for a propelling mechanism. So an ion drive is literally a "going-engine" — atoms that go, flung backward to nudge the ship forward, the etymology quietly delivering on its own promise.
- Thrust
- roughly the weight of a sheet of paper
- Patience pays
- reaches blistering speeds over months of pushing
- Fuel sipper
- uses xenon gas, ejected at huge velocity
- Proven flight
- propelled Dawn probe to two asteroids
- Efficiency king
- ten times the mileage of chemical engines
dawn spacecraft — nasa probe that used ion thrusters to visit asteroids vesta and ceres starting in 2007
hayabusa2 — jaxa's spacecraft with ion engines that collected samples from asteroid ryugu in 2019
deep space 1 — nasa's 1998 mission that demonstrated ion propulsion by visiting comet borrelly