GOCE’s sophisticated electric ion propulsion system has been switched on and confirmed to be operating normally, marking another crucial milestone in the satellite’s post-launch commissioning phase.

CLEVELAND — A small robotic surveyor arrives to explore a near-Earth asteroid. Another robotic spacecraft is returning to Earth with a pristine comet surface sample. Meanwhile, a robotic explorer 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 ...

Space debris is a growing threat to satellites and missions, with over 14,000 pieces already cluttering low-Earth orbit. To address this, Kazunori Takahashi, a researcher at Tohoku University in Japan ...

A new ion engine has been tested in a lab, proving itself to be 25 times more powerful than NASA's current state-of-the-art one. This advanced technology could one day assist humans in reaching Mars.

Milan, 30 October 2024 – Create a prototype of an efficient aircraft capable of flying with ion propulsion. This is the aim of the IPROP project, led by Politecnico di Milano, and funded by the EU ...

The X3 Nested-channel Hall Thruster (NHT), is a 100-kW class thruster developed jointly by the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL) at the University of Michigan, led by Alec ...

Professor Wonho Choe of the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering developed an artificial intelligence technique that can predict the thrust performance of Hall Effect ion thrusters (i.e., ...

LOGAN, Utah–Water-based thruster specialist Pale Blue plans to demonstrate an ion thruster in early 2025. The Japanese company has delivered its water-based ion thruster demonstrator to the Japan ...

Click to open image viewer. This device was used by the American rocket pioneer Dr. Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945) during the period 1924-28 to determine the feasibility of ion propulsion for space ...

Nasa is developing ways to use nuclear power to send spacecraft to their destinations. Nuclear propulsion could greatly reduce the journey time to Mars, perhaps cutting a voyage of more than six ...