Click here for a cool article about NASA's work to study two of the largest known asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. The Dawn mission hopes to reach the asteroids by 2011 and 2015 respectively as is a testament to the great distances being traveled. The Star Wars related tidbit is that the Dawn craft is being propelled by 3 ion engines. (TIE fighters used twin ion engines...um hence the name) See below for an excerpt:

"The ion thrusters push on the spacecraft with less force than a sheet of newspaper does on your hand, he said. Here, that thrust is puny, but in space, which lacks gravity and friction, it can add up to something else.

"It takes Dawn four days to go from zero to 60 miles per hour; that doesn't exactly evoke the image of a hot rod," Rayman said with a laugh. "I call it accelerating with patience. But, over time, the effort builds up. Over the long haul, we will be able to achieve fantastically high speeds."

Try up to 25,000 mph. Ion propulsion is a much more continual thrust ? five years in total for Dawn ? than conventional chemical propulsion and, he added, is more than 10 times as efficient. Without it, it'd be too expensive for NASA to make the trip.

Ion propulsion, Rayman noted, has been around a long time, once only in the domain of science fiction. He first heard of it in a "Star Trek" episode. Most people know it from the "Star Wars" movies and their TIE ? Twin Ion Engine ? fighters.

Alluding to Dawn's three ion engines, Rayman said, "We're doing the Star Wars' TIE fighters one better," and added, "The joy of turning that from science fiction to science fact has been very exciting to me."'



Source: VenturaCountyStar.com