The coming decades of space exploration hinge on a single, stubborn number: the 225 million kilometres between Earth and Mars ...
Russian engineers are betting that a radically different rocket engine can compress the long slog to Mars into something closer to an interplanetary commute. Their new plasma propulsion prototype, ...
Boeing and Lockheed Martin's joint ULA venture uses the Russian-made RD-180 engine. Musk suggested SpaceX, which designs its own rocket engines, wouldn't be affected. Elon Musk recently addressed the ...
Plasma engines could be the future of human space travel, and Russia’s “manetoplasma rockets” have the most ambitious travel goals ...
A NASA Atlas V rocket carrying the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite takes off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., U.S., in 2009. Photographer: Bill Ingalls/NASA via ...
A laboratory prototype of a plasma electric rocket engine based on a magnetic plasma accelerator has been produced by Rosatom scientists, who say it could slash travel time to Mars to one or two ...
Humans have achieved groundbreaking feats in space exploration, reaching distant stretches of space with missions like Voyager 1. However, none of this would have been possible without rockets.