Deep Space 1

Deep Space 1 (DS1) is a project launched by NASA on October 24, 1998 with a mission to test 12 new technologies in space. Namely,

1. An ion propulsion system
2. Solar concentrator arrays (which power the ion engine]
3. An autonomous navigation system, which uses the positions of stars and meteors to reorient the spacecraft.
4. A miniature integrated camera and imaging spectrometer
5. An ion and electron spectrometer
6. A small deep space transponder (built by Motorola).
7. A KA-band solid state amplifier.
8. Beacon monitor operations, which works as a self-monitoring health meter.
9. An autonomous remote agent (An onboard psuedo-AI maintanence system).
10. Ultra-low power electronics.
11. A power actuation and switching module.
12. And multifunctional structures, which involves placing electronics right in a structural panel

It is connected to its NASA mission control center by a 20K/s wireless connection.

Deep Space 1, while being the first space probe to use ion propulsion as its primary drive, is not the first use of that technology in space. At the time of DS1's launch, there were 17 orbital communication satellites (11 belonging to the United States, 6 to Russia) that use ion propulsion to help maintain or correct their orbits.

DS1 also set a record for most accumulated engine usage of a space vehicle on August 17, 2000. At that point its engines had been running for 200 days, and are expected to last over 500 days before the end of its mission.

The DS1 mission was terminated at 1:00:09 pm PST, December 18 2001. The ion drive had been in use for 677 days, and had expended 90% of the xenon it carried at launch. The mission had been been successfully extended to collect data from the comet Borrelly, but plans to further extend the mission to rendezvous in August 2002 with the asteroid named 1999 KK1 were not pursued due to limits on resources and finances.

Sources: Adios In Deep Space, by Marc D. Rayman,Mission Manager DS1, Pasadena - SpaceDaily.com Dec 18, 2001