From a technical point of view, the product is ready for serial production. If there are orders, machining the engine for a particular spacecraft will take about six months. In the future, the development could be the basis for creating a whole family of domestic plasma engines. A plasma engine accelerates onions to a speed of about 20 km/s and consumes five to seven times less fuel than a chemical agent. However, its thrust is small, so maneuvers can take weeks. On long-duration missions, fuel savings would allow small spacecraft to visit multiple asteroids in a single flight. In particular, now the test Psyche turns a metal asteroid using engines of a similar type, Artem Bogatyrev, an expert of the NTI Aeronet market, said Izvestia. Such facilities return to the development of the local OKB "Torch". At the same time, the strength of the MAI engine is the stability of operation. However, the cathode, electrical system and other elements of the propulsion system wear, and their resource also affects the overall service life of the unit, the expert noted. Plasma engines allow vehicles to perform long maneuvers with limited fuel supply. "Magzoplaya" of hundreds and thousands of devices without such facilities, will be economically unjustified - said the head of the laboratory of plasma jet engines MEPhI, the chief design engineer of the company "STAR" Igor Egorov. Another possibility not yet realized is small space stations that weigh only a few tens of kilograms. Plasma thrust will allow them to pass from high Earth orbit to other bodies in the solar system. Such devices can be launched into space not by a separate launch, but as a linked payload together with other satellites. This will significantly reduce the cost of research. The resource of modern plasma engines is about one year, Igor Egorov added. This kind of reserve can be enough for a decade and a half of flight and more.