When it comes to traveling to Mars and other planets, we really can’t continue to rely on chemical burn rockets. These will either burn out too quickly or take too long to get there, and we need to ...

While we have yet to figure out how to travel by warp drive, we have found other ways for spacecraft to propel themselves at mind-boggling speeds across vast distances of outer space. The BepiColombo ...

A University of Sydney researcher claims to have created the world’s most efficient ion engine, beating out even NASA’s esteemed HiPEP engine, which currently holds the record for ion drive ...

It seems as if the age of the bench-top breakthrough in rocket science is not a thing of the past. Dr Patrick Neumann of the University of Sydney has developed a new ion drive as part of his PhD ...

An artist’s concept shows a space probe powered by ion thrusters. (Credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne) Aerojet Rocketdyne’s next-generation ion thrusters could well make their debut in space during NASA’s ...

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 ...

The next generation of ion engines have a fuel efficiency 10 to 12 times greater than traditional chemical thrusters. A five-year test of NASA's latest ion drive for future spacecraft has set a new ...

The phrase "engage the ion drive" still has the ring of a line from Star Wars, but these engines have been used in space missions for more than four decades and remain the subject of ongoing research.

After suffering its share of dark days, NASA's Dawn mission finally had its “day in the sun” with Thursday morning’s launch toward our solar system's main asteroid belt. The sun nearly set on Dawn a ...

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