A proposed mission to Titan using NASA's NEXT ion engine

A proposed mission to Saturn's moon Titan using NASA's NEXT ion engine. The NEXT ion thruster is capable of delivering 236 milliNewtons of force over the course of the multi-year mission to deliver a satellite and a lander to Titan.

For the Titan mission, both an orbiter and a lander could be sent to the distant moon, which lies more than 1 billion kilometres from the Sun.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NASA
• Tian
• mission
• xenon
• ion
• thruster
• engine
• propulsion
• next
• orbitor
• saturn
• space

[rogerpenna]

how to make it viable? Simply... spend 650 billion in science instead of war (thats the Iraq War cost so far)

[GreenFont]

Forty or so years on from the first moon landing and our space technology is still shockingly shit.

[PICLex]

@GreenFont

rofl

[insightllc]

@TheTrueUSPatriot HEY, Patriot... Nikola Tesla made earthquakes and YOU are going to hell. So saith THE LORD. -Biblical Prophet

[lckyl16]

@GreenFont Cuz we probably never went to the moon in the first place. Perhaps America was under so much pressure that it fabricated much that was seen on TV. Hey, you never know.

[TheTrueUSPatriot]

@greenFont Type in space propulsion in wikipedia and at the bottom you'll see a list of propulsion systems that NASA has been working on. It even tells you what is flight proven, flight qualified and what is still in prototype, or what is still a component in a lab to basic principles formulated.

[TheTrueUSPatriot]

@GreenFont 

[TheTrueUSPatriot]

@GreenFont Clearly you need to do some research then because propulsion systems have become more and more advanced ever since then. They have been from solid-fuel rocket propulsion to hybrid, to monopropellant, to liquid-fuel, to electrostatic ion thrusters, Hall effect thrusters, resistojet rocket engine, arcjet engines, to field emission electric propulsion systems. So don't sit there and try to say that our space technology is garbage.

[GreenFont]

@NOS604 I was thinking mainly in the sense of funding, but now you mention it, computing is used for processing huge amounts of data in a time frame that I assume was impossible during most of the second half of the 20th century. CERN's LHC is probably a good example of computing opening up new methods of scientific exploration.

[NOS604]

@GreenFont Computing allows most of the breakthroughs to occur in most other fields.

[niflap]

@graceman25 I beieve ion drive is electrical, & electricity us not an energy soarse but an energy byproduct. It needs energy from another soarse. I pressume the ones used so far have been solar powered.