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 ...

On February 24, 2026, inside a specialized vacuum chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers fed lithium metal vapor into a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster and pushed it ...

There are a few technically feasible approaches to get about a megawatt of power in space using nuclear power or solar power. Russia has a project to develop about a megawatt nuclear reactor for space ...

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has successfully tested a lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic thruster at 120 kilowatts, the highest electric propulsion power ever achieved in the U.S. The breakthrough ...

It was believed that Hall thrusters, an efficient kind of electric propulsion widely used in orbit, need to be large to produce a lot of thrust. Now, a new study suggests that smaller Hall thrusters ...

It’s no secret anymore that humanity is going to Mars in the relatively near future. Already, we’re seeing the first steps being taken toward the realization of that decades-long dream of our species, ...

A part of the performance degradation mechanism of the advanced, electrodeless, helicon plasma thruster with a magnetic nozzle, has been revealed by the research group of Dr. Kazunori Takahashi and ...

Benjamin Jorns, U-M associate professor of aerospace engineering led a new Hall thruster study that operated a Hall Plasma thruster at five times old power limits. His team challenged ran a 9 kilowatt ...

It has been believed that Hall thrusters, an efficient kind of electric propulsion widely used in orbit, must be large to produce a lot of thrust. Now, a new study from the University of Michigan ...