The coming decades of space exploration hinge on a single, stubborn number: the 225 million kilometres between Earth and Mars ...

Long before any spacecraft can attempt a faster journey to Mars, scientists must first solve one of space exploration’s ...

Plasma engines could be the future of human space travel, and Russia’s “manetoplasma rockets” have the most ambitious travel goals ...

A peer-reviewed study modeling Mars transit times for chemical propulsion rockets found that even optimized Starship-class trajectories would still require roughly three months to reach the Red Planet ...

Those who watched The Space Between Us would surely have a fresh memory of the plane that Gary Oldman’s character flew from the ground into space. The plane probably used plasma jet engines and they ...

Russia's state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, has developed a plasma electric rocket engine that could send spacecraft to Mars in just 30 to 60 days. The plasma engine works by accelerating ...

We’ve been talking about going to Mars for decades, but we haven’t yet cracked how to get people there and back safely and in a reasonable amount of time. The problem is one of distance and the ...

Plasma propulsion transforms an inert propellant – often hydrogen – into plasma, a superheated mix of ions and electrons.