Rockets might be fiery fun, but they’re big, bulky, and heavy. Ion thrusters, sci-fi as they sound, are real and these penny-sized ones are probably the future of steering small satellites in orbit.

BepiColombo, the joint ESA/JAXA spacecraft on a mission to Mercury, is now firing its thrusters for the first time in flight. On Sunday, BepiColombo carried out the first successful manoeuver using ...

What do scanning electron microscopes and satellites have in common? On the face of things, not much, but after seeing [Zachary Tong]’s latest video on liquid metal ion thrusters, we see that they ...

Ion thrusters are an amazing spacecraft propulsion technology, providing very high efficiency with relatively little fuel. Yet getting one to produce more thrust than that required to lift a sheet of ...

The lower box is one the earliest spacecraft ion thrusters (from EOS circa 1962), and on top is a new arrival, a modern marvel from the SpaceX Starlink satellites used for on orbit maneuvering. SpaceX ...

A rendezvous with the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche is scheduled for 2029. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. NASA's mission to the ...

In 2018, Elon Musk put a Tesla in space. Like many of the billionaire’s antics, it was a publicity stunt. However, it pointed to an undeniable truth: the future of space travel is electric. Most ...

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., ...

Pale Blue was awarded grants worth up to $27 million from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to develop miniature water-based ion and Hall-effect thrusters ...

Boeing [NYSE:BA] has been awarded three new contracts under NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Technologies program for the development of advanced xenon ion propulsion technologies. NASA awarded the projects ...