NASA Fires Up Record-Breaking Plasma Thruster for Future Mars Missions

NASA just tested a blazing-hot plasma engine that could help carry humans to Mars.

NASA’s first nuclear-powered spacecraft is heading to Mars, and its bringing helicopters

For years, nuclear propulsion sat in the same category as so many ambitious space ideas, impressive on paper, always a few ...
Morning Overview on MSN

NASA fires up a lithium-fed thruster at 120 kilowatts — the most powerful electric engine the agency has ever tested for trips to Mars

On February 24, 2026, inside a specialized vacuum chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers ...
Business Wire

BAE Systems Provides Propulsion System for First U.S. Marine Vessel With Zero-Emission Fuel Cell Technology

SAN FRANCISCO & ENDICOTT, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BAE Systems, a leader in electric propulsion, successfully installed its zero-emission propulsion system in the first U.S. hydrogen fuel cell powered ...
SpaceNews

Orion Propulsion Completes Qualification Testing for Innovative “Green” Propulsion System that will Power World’s First Commercial Space Habitat

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.–Orion Propulsion, Inc. today announced completion of a qualification test program for the Forward Propulsion System (FPS) of Bigelow Aerospace’s Sundancer Project, the world’s first ...
The Aviationist on MSN

DARPA's XRQ-73 SHEPARD Hybrid-Electric Flying Wing Prototype Takes Flight

Designed by Northrop Grumman and subsidiary Scaled Composites, the unmanned XRQ-73 features an ultra-quiet propulsion system ...
Ars Technica

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, located nearly 150 million miles from Earth on the way to an unexplored metal asteroid, has stopped firing its engines after detecting a problem in its propulsion system.
NextBigFuture

Robust Plasma Propulsion Ignition System Developed for Cubesats

Purdue has created part of a new cubesat thruster which electromagnetically accelerates plasma to produce thrust. They have successfully tested the ignition system for more than 1.5 million pulses.
world-nuclear-news

Nuclear propulsion system proposed for European space missions

A consortium led by Belgian engineering firm Tractebel has completed the European Space Agency-commissioned RocketRoll project on nuclear electric propulsion for space exploration. The consortium has ...
New Atlas

New propulsion system gets CubeSats moving with teaspoons of water

Inexpensive and compact CubeSats are great for certain missions, but their simplicity can limit their applications. For one, most of them don't pack their own propulsion systems, instead hitchhiking ...
Business Wire

BAE Systems Launches Next-Generation Power and Propulsion System to Help Marine Operators Reach Zero Emissions

ENDICOTT, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BAE Systems, a leader in electric propulsion, has launched its next-generation power and propulsion system for the marine market. The HybriGen® Power and Propulsion ...
SpaceNews

Accion Systems to demonstrate its propulsion system in NanoAvionics US rideshare mission

NanoAvionics, a multinational nanosatellite bus manufacturer and mission integrator, has signed a contract with US-company Accion Systems to host their propulsion system, TILE 3, on-board its new ...