P.L. to simulate conditions similar to outer space. The test began in June 1996, and after 8,000 hours of testing the project ended in September 1997. In 1998, DS1 fired its engines and maintained its operations throughout the mission. During the acceptance test, the engine ran for two hundred hours, twice as long as expected, and it achieved the minimal criteria accepted by N.A.S.A. for overall mission success. In August 2000, the spacecraft set a record for engine operation, in which DS1 ran for than 200 days. The previous record was 161 days set by the Space Electric Rocket Test 2. The Deep Space 1 spacecraft extended its mission by passing by the comet Borrelly on September 22, 2001 at a rate of 750,000 miles per day. This encounter was risky because the spacecraft came within 1,400 miles of the comet. DS1 used 72 kilograms xenon propellant that operated for 16,246 hours, and the spacecraft is currently orbiting the sun with the radio transmitters so future generations can contact DS1. Overall, the experiment was a great success.
Understanding how the engine works helps is important to comprehending the benefits of such technology. The success of DS1's missions was greatly due to the design of its engines. These engines are not for quick accelerations to high velocity. Ion engines take time to get up to speed and maintain. However, this type of engine is capable of maintaining a given speed with great efficiency.
There are four major components to an ion engine system: a power source (such as the solar panels), a power processing unit that converts the solar power into electrical current, a computer monitoring system, and the engine/thrust system. This list explains the name "solar electric" due to the use of solar conductive panels for harvesting light energy to be converted to electricity. Onboard systems receive power from the conversion and create the resulting ionic thrust via the engine.