spacecraft. Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa space probe was launched in 2003 and successfully rendezvoused with the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. It was powered by four xenon ion engines, which used microwave electron cyclotron resonance to ionize the propellant and an erosion-resistant carbon/carbon-composite material for its acceleration grid. Although the ion engines on Hayabusa experienced technical difficulties, in-flight reconfiguration allowed one of the four engines to be repaired and allowed the mission to successfully return to Earth. Hayabusa2, launched in 2014, was based on Hayabusa. It also used ion thrusters. Smart 1 The European Space Agency's satellite SMART-1 launched in 2003 using a Snecma PPS-1350-G Hall thruster to get from GTO to lunar orbit. This satellite completed its mission on 3 September 2006, in a controlled collision on the Moon's surface, after a trajectory deviation so scientists could see the 3-meter crater the impact created on the visible side of the Moon. Dawn Dawn launched on 27 September 2007, to explore the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It used three Deep Space 1 heritage xenon ion thrusters (firing one at a time). Dawn ion drive is capable of accelerating from 0 to in 4 days of continuous firing. The mission ended on 1 November 2018, when the spacecraft ran out of hydrazine chemical propellant for its attitude thrusters. LISA Pathfinder LISA Pathfinder is an ESA spacecraft launched in 2015 to orbit the sun-Earth L1 point. It does not use ion thrusters as its primary propulsion system, but uses both colloid thrusters and FEEP for precise attitude control – the low thrusts of these propulsion devices make it possible to move the spacecraft incremental distances accurately. It is a test for the LISA mission. The mission ended on 30 December 2017. BepiColombo ESA's BepiColombo mission was launched to Mercury on 20 October 2018. It uses ion thrusters in combination with swing-bys to get to Mercury, where a chemical rocket will complete orbit insertion. Double Asteroid Redirection Test NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched in 2021 and operated its NEXT-C xenon ion thruster for about 1,000 hours to reach the target asteroid on 28 September 2022. Proposed missions International Space Station , a future launch of an Ad Astra VF-200 VASIMR electromagnetic thruster was under consideration for testing on the International Space Station (ISS). However, in 2015, NASA ended plans for flying the VF-200 to