Hidden deep within the dark and unreadable recesses of NASA’s 2014, $17.7 billion dollar spending plan lurks something made of science fiction. It will allow mankind to travel the solar system at unprecedented speeds to origins, until now, only probed by high-powered telescopes.
Over the next decade, NASA is planning to design and build an unmanned craft, powered by an “ion propulsion engine,” to travel millions of miles into space, with its first set of instructions: to “lasso” an asteroid and tow it back for study.
At first glance, the project sounds ridiculous, but it arrives on the coattails of a recent study by Caltech’s Keck Institute for Space Studies that reviewed the feasibility of “robotically capturing a 500-ton asteroid about 23 feet wide and placing it in orbit near the moon by 2025” so that once the technology develops for scientists to be able to physically land on the asteroid and study it, well, we’d already have one nearby. If this concept doesn’t get your sci-fi glands pumping fast enough, let’s now discuss the ion propulsion engine.
NASA scientists expect the engine to operate by “combining high-energy, negatively charged electrons together with neutral propellant atoms (xenon) in a contained environment” in hopes that the electrons and atoms will furiously collide into each other, which will theoretically result in the yield of a second electron, which will then result in thrust. To add aesthetic legitimacy, the reaction gives off a faint blue glow, just like in the movies.
Apart from it being far more technologically advanced than any current propulsion method, the ion propulsion engine will not only travel at speeds far greater than current engines (the Space Shuttle travelled at roughly 18,000 mph. It is anticipated that the new generation of engines will reach speeds in excess of 200,000 mph) but it will also be incredibly fuel-efficient so that spacecraft may travel further, faster and less expensively.
As if this new technology wasn’t enough to make us salivate, NASA researchers have also alluded to the idea that they are already exploring other, more advanced methods beyond ion propulsion. The word “antimatter” has been thrown around. Your eyes just got bigger didn’t they? Don’t hold your breath. The anticipated timeline for antimatter engine development is roughly 40 years. Still, the notion that we may see these technologies in action within our lifetime is astounding.
Pretty cool, eh?
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