The X3 is one of three Mars engine prototypes currently in development. It is what's known as a Hall thruster, which uses electric and magnetic fields to ionize gases like xenon and expels the ...

The X3 Nested-channel Hall Thruster (NHT), is a 100-kW class thruster developed jointly by the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL) at the University of Michigan, led by Alec ...

At an overall efficiency of 51%, they achieved their maximum thrust of about 1.8 Newtons, on par with the much larger 100-kilowatt-class X3 Hall thruster. "This is kind of a crazy result because ...

Running with krypton, a lighter gas, they maxed out their power supply at 45 kilowatts. At an overall efficiency of 51%, they achieved their maximum thrust of about 1.8 Newtons, on par with the much ...

A thruster that's being developed for a future NASA mission to Mars broke several records during recent tests, suggesting that the technology is on track to take humans to the Red Planet within ...

The X3 thruster was designed by researchers at the University of Michigan in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Air Force. It is a Hall thruster — a system that propels spacecraft by accelerating a ...

Mars missions are just on the horizon, and we already know that Hall thrusters work well in space,' says Alec Gallimore, lead engineer on the X3's development. 'They can be optimized either for ...

A side shot of the X3 firing at 50 kilowatts. Ion thrusters are among the most exciting propulsion systems for future deep space exploration, and the technology's viability has already been ...

The X3 ion thruster is one of such developments. While it’s far from space-worthy, NASA is currently testing the 500-pound device at the Glenn Research Facility. It already set three records in 2018, ...

showed the X3 breaking records for the “maximum power output, thrust and operating current achieved by a Hall thruster to date.” Current thrusters used in rockets for space exploration are ...

At an overall efficiency of 51%, they achieved their maximum thrust of about 1.8 Newtons, on par with the much larger 100-kilowatt-class X3 Hall thruster. "This is kind of a crazy result because ...