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Boeing EDD Wins NASA Contracts for Advanced Electric Propulsion Technology
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11262
The third award named EDD as a member of the NASA Glenn Research Center team for the High Power Electric Propulsion project. This program will develop and test technologies for high specific impulse, 25 to 30 kilowatt, gridded xenon ion thrusters, two-stage Hall thrusters, power processing units and propellant control systems. EDD will perform the power processing unit design and analysis for the project system and participate in the thruster and propellant system technologies.
The designs that will be developed and demonstrated on these three programs over the next 2?-years are the critical technologies needed for development of very high power (100kW to 250kW) nuclear electric propulsion systems for NASA's future deep space missions.
"Participation in these exciting new programs will allow EDD to assist NASA in the development new electric propulsion products with significant performance improvements," said Andrew King, Electric Propulsion product line director at EDD. "These next generation products will enable NASA to perform further exploration of the solar system."
They are planning on developing this technology over the next 2-3 years. After the completion, NASA would have propulsion cabale of faster, longer, and more powerful thrust for deep space missions. Not to mention that the power to scientific instruments would be greatly increased.
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This may not be the proper thread for this question.
Once upon a time I recall hearing that a shortage of xenon gas resources for use in ion propulsion was a major stumbling block to this technology. Nuclear thermal uses hydrogen and we have lots of that - but xenon for elecric ion (whether solar or nuclear) was a big problem.
Anyone have information on this?
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