A group of French physicists has optimized a type of ion thruster to significantly extend its lifetime: the new development made it sturdy enough to be able withstand a long trip into deep space. Such ...

A new jet engine design may mean that future flights will require no fuel, reducing costs and helping the environment. It might be several years, though.

Plasma engines can’t get us to space yet, but they are extremely useful in that they can deliver a large thrust with very little fuel. The plasma engines do their job, but they have plenty of room for ...

Thousands of pieces of space junk are littering low-Earth orbit (LEO), potentially imperiling the future of human spaceflight. A new study highlights a novel idea to clean up this orbital mess using ...

Hayabusa spacecraft had been on the way to Earth with the ion engines B and/or D powered on since April 2007, though it lost the functions of chemical thrusters and two of three reaction wheels at the ...

A research team of fusion scientists succeeded in proving that ions can be heated by plasma oscillations driven by high-energy particles. This has been confirmed by performing a large-scale simulation ...