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 ...

When it comes to space exploration, large vehicles get most of the press -- but a team on KickStarter wants to build an engine that could power nanoscale satellites on their own journeys of ...

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 ...

Two spacecraft were soon going to cross the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS through its ion tail, one of the two comet tails, ...

A form of electric propulsion known as Hall thrusters — a type of ion thruster — may actually pack more bang for the buck than expected. Hall thrusters have conventionally been used to adjust the ...

LOGAN, Utah–Water-based thruster specialist Pale Blue plans to demonstrate an ion thruster in early 2025. The Japanese company has delivered its water-based ion thruster demonstrator to the Japan ...

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.

Over the last several months, we’ve been enjoying a front-row seat as [Jay Bowles] of Plasma Channel has been developing and perfecting his design for a high voltage multi-stage ionic thruster. With ...