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.

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 ...

Sending an object to another star is still the stuff of science fiction. But some concrete missions could get us at least part way there. These "interstellar precursor missions" include a trip to the ...

The community is taking maneuver more seriously — and that shift is overdue. But the maneuver conversation still carries a blind spot: Propulsion is treated too generically. Whether a spacecraft can ...

Matter-antimatter annihilations produce about 10 billion times more energy per unit mass than chemical combustion (which ...

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 ...

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 ...

Look, if you're going to send nukes to an asteroid, it would be far more efficient (and safer) to send an RTG that powers an ion-propulsion engine or ten. Sure, you don't get the earth-shattering ...

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 ...

Quick update on NASA's amazing plan to lasso an asteroid: they're making progress on the ion propulsion engine they'll need for the mission, one month after president Obama proposed giving NASA $100 ...