NASAs mission DART will check our capability to redirect an asteroid by quite literally crashing into it– but the spacecraft will likewise test a brand-new type of propulsion system for the agency.NASAs Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial (NEXT-C) is an ion drive. An ion drive was previously utilized on NASAs Deep Space 1 and Dawn spacecraft, which launched in 1998 and 2007, however NEXT-C will be 3 times as powerful, according to NASA.” It is a little bittersweet to understand that we are only going to be able to run for a short quantity of time before we impact the asteroid,” Jeremy John, lead propulsion engineer for DART, and an engineer for Johns Hopkins University Advanced Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), stated in a video.NEXT-C wont be the primary force pushing DART along its journey; that task will fall to the 12 conventional thrusters aboard the spacecraft that will be accountable for much of the spacecrafts motions, consisting of in the final leg of its journey as it plunges into Dimorphos.But NEXT-C will light up a number of times along DARTs journey.
