Aerojet Rocketdyne has been awarded a US$67 million contract by NASA to build a “high thrust” version with double the thrust of current Hall Effect electric thrusters that the firm has already developed.
The Xenon-gas powered thruster will probably be used on long range NASA missions including one to retrieve a boulder or asteroid from deep space.
While the thrust from electric thrusters remains miniscule compared to conventional bi-propellant conventional chemical thrusters, they are known to have excellent efficiency in terms of their specific impulse (momentum change per kg of propellants). These thrusters are normally left on for long periods of time.
