Interestingly, the spacecraft would use an innovative propulsion method: lightsails. These types of reflective sails use the pressure from lasers or starlight to propel spacecraft. These ultrathin ...

Electric propulsion enables efficient space travel Ion engine challenges include back-scattered electrons Research offers solutions for safer spacecraft systems ...

The idea behind electric propulsion is that an electric current ionizes (i.e. removes an electron from) atoms of a neutral gas, such as xenon or krypton ... to as an ion engine.

Today, rockets heavily rely on chemical propulsion. Deep space probes like Voyager 1 and 2, meanwhile, have used ion propulsion to reach further than any human-made spacecraft. While chemical ...

There are alternatives to chemical rockets, such as ion drives and solar sails ... candidate for this is the Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system or nuclear rocket. First conceived of in ...

A new type of nuclear thermal propulsion reactor fuel has been successfully tested at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with hopes that the fuel could take humans to Mars in the not-too ...

Twelve percent of airline respondents see a blended wing body like JetZero's (right) as the most promising option for a new airliner, while just 2% favor the truss-braced wing concept Boeing is ...

Predicting the lifetime of an electric ion thruster is notoriously difficult. You have to account for the chamber wall effects, which are not present in space environments. Researchers within several ...

On Jan. 11, an airborne imaging spectrometer managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flew over Los Angeles County to survey the damage from the historic fires. It captured images of charred ...