You don't run an ion engine toward an inhabited rock if you care about your customers.

The use of a nuclear reactor to run ion engines.

Another dead end came in attempts to use buckyballs as a fuel for ion engines.

I come fully to life, and bring my ion engine up to thrust.

The robot chasing me is, I am sure, little different than myself, a tiny brain, an ion engine, and a large set of tanks.

At times, the ion engine will be turned off and the spacecraft will coast, engineers said.

Another promising technology, tested on Deep Space 1, is the ion engine.

As I understand it, their ion engines work on principles very similar to those employed by other races in our experience.

With a touch on his console, he expected their problems would be over and then he could get a look at those ion engines.

The ion engines in Jimo would have to be at least 10 times more powerful.

In an ion thruster, electricity is used to accelerate ions out the back.

In the US, scientists focused instead on developing gridded ion thrusters.

A 4-grid ion thruster with only 0.2 m diameter is projected to absorb 250 kW power.

Its ion thrusters glowed bright blue to compensate the wayward thrust.

It proposes to use a radioisotope thermal generator with ion thrusters.

Various ion thrusters have been designed and they all generally fit under two categories.

The following table compares actual test data of some ion thrusters:

To cause enough change in momentum, ion thrusters are designed to last for periods of weeks to years.

In addition, several missions are planned to use ion thrusters in the next few years.

Spacecraft which do not need to escape from strong gravity may use ion thrusters or other more efficient methods.