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Comment by hydrogen7800

BepiColombo [0] uses 581 kg of Xe gas for its electric propulsion. I remember reading at the time this was being built that it consumed a measurable portion of the global xenon production for that year. This post reminded me to look that up, and it seems to be only ~1% of the ~50 tons, which is quite a bit less than I remember but still quite significant for a single application to use a non-trivial amount of the supply.

[0]https://sci.esa.int/web/bepicolombo/-/60642-bepicolombo-mtm-...

parent hydrogen7800 8 months ago

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