NSTAR
NASA’s NSTAR is a 30 cm xenon gridded-ion electric thruster flown on Deep Space 1 and Dawn. NASA technical material specifies 0.5–2.3 kW input, approximately 20–92 mN thrust, 1,900–3,200 s specific impulse, and about 65% efficiency; the canonical graph preserves one Deep Space 1 engine and three Dawn thrusters with one active at a time and one spare. Status remains retired.
Identity
- Domains
- spaceflight
- Identity Level
- model
- Kind
- electric-thruster
- Name
- NSTAR
- Status
- retired
Details
- Description
- NASA’s NSTAR is a 30 cm xenon gridded-ion electric thruster flown on Deep Space 1 and Dawn. NASA technical material specifies 0.5–2.3 kW input, approximately 20–92 mN thrust, 1,900–3,200 s specific impulse, and about 65% efficiency; the canonical graph preserves one Deep Space 1 engine and three Dawn thrusters with one active at a time and one spare. Status remains retired.
- Developers
- Electric Specs
- Efficiency
- 0.65
- Input Power Kw Max
- 2.3
- Input Power Kw Min
- 0.5
- Specific Impulse SMax
- 3,200
- Specific Impulse SMin
- 1,900
- Thrust NMax
- 0.092
- Thrust NMin
- 0.02
- Propellants
- xenon
Assets & Meta
- Creation Time
- July 29, 2026 at 07:55:36 UTC
- Updated Time
- August 22, 2026 at 05:54:57 UTC
- Image
- Download
Other
- Sources
- Accessed Date
- 2026-08-14
- Note
- NASA technical material identifies the 30-cm xenon NSTAR ion propulsion system, 0.5–2.3 kW throttle range, approximately 92 mN maximum thrust, and 1,900–3,200 s specific impulse.
- Publisher
- NASA Technical Reports Server
- Title
- NSTAR Xenon Ion Engine on Deep Space 1: Ground & Flight Tests
- Accessed Date
- 2026-08-14
- Note
- NASA reports NSTAR’s 0.5–2.3 kW power range, 92 mN full-power thrust, and approximately 3,300 s specific impulse for the Deep Space 1 system.
- Publisher
- NASA Technical Reports Server
- Title
- Development of the NSTAR Ion Propulsion System
- Accessed Date
- 2026-08-14
- Note
- NASA’s Dawn mission page identifies the flight ion propulsion architecture and xenon operation underlying the exact three-thruster configuration.
- Publisher
- NASA
- Title
- Ion Propulsion — Dawn Mission