If you’re familiar with advancements in spacecraft engine development, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of something known as the ion drive engine. In essence, the ion drive engine is a solid-state ...

Ion thrusters are an amazing spacecraft propulsion technology, providing very high efficiency with relatively little fuel. Yet getting one to produce more thrust than that required to lift a sheet of ...

Researchers just test-fired a new type of ion thruster that “breathes” air, and one day, it could help humanity reach Mars and beyond. Better propulsion systems are key to advancing our space ...

Astra Space says it’s made a deal with Tukwila, Wash.-based LeoStella to provide multiple electric propulsion systems for LeoStella’s small satellites, with deliveries due to begin later this year.

Last week, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that they’d conducted a successful flight test of an aircraft with a sci-fi-sounding propulsion system called an ion drive ...

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NASA is launching a spacecraft destined to slam into an asteroid as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tonight, from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Its purpose ...

As much as we love Star Trek, we have to admit there are some continuity problems. For example, in Spock’s Brain, the alien-of-the-week’s ion drive gave Scotty engineering envy. However, in The ...

Refinement of the Mach Effect Propulsion using brass separation from the reaction mass has improved the thrust by about 65 times up to 60 millinewtons per kilowatt. This would be competitive with the ...