Full Throttle For Deep Space 1

Full Throttle For Deep Space 1



At full throttle th Deep Space 1 spacecraft' innovative ion driveproduces about 1/50th of a pound of thrust ... a force so greatthat it woul just abouthold up a piece of paper on planet Earth!Still, powered by solar array ion propulsionsystems can run continuously.For long duration space missions they ultimatel win outover the powerfulbut brief blasts of less efficien chemical rockets.Deep Space 1 i seen here suspended in an assembly room, a folde solar arrayresting above the circular ion propulsion module.Already a successfu technologydemonstrator with experimenta autonomous software,the spacecraft flew b asteroid 9969 Braille in July of 1999.Later that year, in November, the robot probe wasnearly lost due to the failure of its wide-field star tracker camera.But engineers were able to reprogram the navigationsystem to utilize another on-board camera and on 28 June 2000the ion drive was throttled up.Now, th adventuresof Deep Space 1 continue Againsteering by the stars, Deep Space isscheduled to rendezvous with periodi CometBorrelly today.