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A spacecraft traveling at one-tenth of the speed of light could shave the trip down to a quick 40 years. Future engineers could use nuclear power to achieve that, says Scott Bailey, an engineer at ...

To understand why, you need to know two things: how ion drive works and how the engines differ when using them in an atmosphere. Let’s start with a space-based ion engine, a topic we’ve ...

Ion engines won’t get you out of Earth’s gravity well, nor do they work in the atmosphere, but become useful when you’re in the vacuum of space. Credit: NASA, public domain Before we dive ...

Unlike most interplanetary probes, Dawn is not propelled by a chemical rocket engine, but by a solar-electric ion propulsion system, particularly suitable for long-distance flights. This innovative ...

There are even plans to use electric propulsion on NASA's Lunar Gateway space station ... propulsion system is also referred to as an ion engine. According to Sir Isaac Newton's third law of ...

Dr. King is an experimentalist interested in studying electric space propulsion systems, including Hall-effect thrusters, ion engines, and arcjets. By utilizing strong electromagnetic forces to ...