Project Description

An Ion Thruster is a form of spaceship propulsion that uses accelerated ions to create thrust in zero-G. We built a device that resembled NASA’s NEXT ion thruster, which ionizes xenon. Our device ionizes air instead.  A relaxing breeze (up to 0.8 meters per second) is created when high voltage (7 kilovolts) is applied across copper nails separated from a honeycomb structure.  We used a MakeZine article* as blueprints and built our device from scratch using copper conductors and wood in the LC Science Shop.

*”Build an Ionic Thruster like NASA uses for Space Propulsion!