{"id":133062,"date":"2021-12-25T22:54:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T06:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/nasa-is-launching-an-asteroid-smashing-spacecraft-today-and-its-powered-by-an-ion-drive"},"modified":"2021-12-25T22:54:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-26T06:54:40","slug":"nasa-is-launching-an-asteroid-smashing-spacecraft-today-and-its-powered-by-an-ion-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/nasa-is-launching-an-asteroid-smashing-spacecraft-today-and-its-powered-by-an-ion-drive","title":{"rendered":"NASA Is Launching an Asteroid-Smashing Spacecraft Today and It\u2019s Powered by an Ion Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasa-is-launching-an-asteroid-smashing-spacecraft-today-and-its-powered-by-an-ion-drive2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NASA is launching a spacecraft destined to slam into an asteroid as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tonight, from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Its purpose: to test whether we\u2019re capable of deflecting a killer asteroid before it strikes Earth.<\/p>\n<p>But before it meets its final destination, NASA is using the spacecraft to test out brand new ion drive technology \u2014 and it\u2019s straight out of a science fiction movie.<\/p>\n<p>The space agency\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www1.grc.nasa.gov\/space\/sep\/gridded-ion-thrusters-next-c\/\" class=\"\">Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial<\/a> (NEXT-C) uses the spacecraft\u2019s solar power to create an electrical field. This field then accelerates a xenon propellant to speeds of up to 90,000 mph, harnessing the resulting stream of \u201cthousands of ion jets\u201d as propulsion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA is launching a spacecraft destined to slam into an asteroid as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tonight, from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Its purpose: to test whether we\u2019re capable of deflecting a killer asteroid before it strikes Earth. But before it meets its final destination, NASA is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}