The coming decades of space exploration hinge on a single, stubborn number: the 225 million kilometres between Earth and Mars. Chemical rockets, the workhorses of every space programme to date, take ...

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 ...

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

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

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 ...

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 ...

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