If you’re familiar with advancements in spacecraft engine development, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of something known as the ion drive engine. In essence, the ion drive engine is a solid-state ...

We’ve often heard the expression “that won’t fly,” but an MIT-based experimental model literally contradicts that statement for one type of flight propulsion. Like a science-fiction story come true, ...

A team of MIT engineers has flown what was long thought impossible – a heavier than air craft that needs no moving parts for achieving powered lift. The 5-lb (2.3-kg) prototype with a 16-ft (5-m) ...

MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind”. Ion wind propulsion systems could be ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Hop in an airplane today, and it will get the thrust it needs to fly ...

They propose a new power/propulsion architecture to enable missions such as a 12-yr flight time to 500 AU—the distance at which solar gravity lensing can be used to image exoplanets—with a ...

Boeing [NYSE:BA] has been awarded three new contracts under NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Technologies program for the development of advanced xenon ion propulsion technologies. NASA awarded the projects ...

Not that we don’t love Star Trek, but the writers could never decide if ion propulsion was super high tech (Spock’s Brain) or something they used every day (The Menagerie). Regardless, ion propulsion ...

In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, a xenon ion engine is photographed on Jan. 1, 1999, through a port of the vacuum chamber where it was being tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion ...

In a development that could help slow the proliferation of space junk, the orbit of a communications satellite has for the first time been altered using solid iodine as a propellant. The Beihangkonshi ...