The development of the X3 engine, designed at the University of Michigan in cooperation with the US Air Force, is still underway, but the technology already looks promising for long-distance space travel. During tests at the Genn Research Center of NASA in Ohio, the X3 ion thruster generated 5.4 newtons of thrust. The previous record was 3.3 N. "It operated at a huge range of power from 5 kW to 102 kW, with an electrical current of up to 260 amperes. It generated 5.4 Newtons of thrust, which is the highest level of thrust achieved by any plasma thruster to date," the dean of engineering at the University of Michigan, Alec Gallimore, who is leading the project, told Space.com. The X3 is a Hall thruster, a type of ion thruster in which the propellant, the most common being xenon, is accelerated by an electric field. This design uses a stream of ions to propel a spacecraft and expels plasma to generate thrust, which allows for much greater speeds to be reached compared to chemical