development, signing the first Space Act Agreement on 23 June 2005 to privatize VASIMR technology. Franklin Chang Díaz is Ad Astra's chairman and CEO, and the company had a testing facility in Liberia, Costa Rica on the campus of Earth University. VX-10 to VX-50 In 1998, the first helicon plasma experiment was performed at the ASPL. VASIMR experiment 10 (VX-10) in 1998 achieved a helicon RF plasma discharge of up to 10 kW and VX-25 in 2002 of up to 25 kW. By 2005 progress at ASPL included full and efficient plasma production and acceleration of the plasma ions with the 50 kW, thrust VX-50. Published data on the 50 kW VX-50 showed the electrical efficiency to be 59% based on a 90% coupling efficiency and a 65% ion speed boosting efficiency. VX-100 The 100 kilowatt VASIMR experiment was successfully running by 2007 and demonstrated efficient plasma production with an ionization cost below 100eV. VX-100 plasma output tripled the prior record of the VX-50. The VX-100 was expected to have an ion speed boosting efficiency of 80%, but could not achieve this efficiency due to losses from the conversion of DC electric current to radio frequency power and the auxiliary equipment for the superconducting magnet. In contrast, 2009 state-of-the-art, proven ion engine designs such as NASA's High Power Electric Propulsion (HiPEP) operated at 80% total thruster/PPU energy efficiency. VX-200 On 24 October 2008, the company announced in a press release that the helicon plasma generation component of the 200 kW VX-200 engine had reached operational status. The key enabling technology, solid-state DC-RF power-processing, reached 98% efficiency. The helicon discharge used 30 kW of radio waves to turn argon gas into plasma. The remaining 170 kW of power was allocated for acceleration of plasma in the second part of the engine, via ion cyclotron resonance heating. Based on data from VX-100 testing, it was expected that, if room temperature superconductors are ever discovered, the VX-200 engine would have a system efficiency of 60–65% and a potential thrust level of 5 N. Optimal specific impulse appeared to be around 5,000 s using low cost argon propellant. One of the remaining untested issues was whether the hot plasma actually detached from the rocket. Another issue was waste heat management. About 60% of input energy became useful kinetic energy. Much of the remaining 40% is secondary ionizations from plasma crossing magnetic field lines and