NASA engineers have successfully tested a new breed of reaction control engine and propulsion system. Aimed at furthering NASA’s space exploration goals, the tests helped investigate the possibility of future space travel fueled by non-toxic propellants.

NASA’s push for a new nuclear rocket engine is not just another upgrade to the hardware we strap to the bottom of spacecraft. It is an attempt to rewrite the basic rules of how far, how fast, and how safely humans and robots can travel beyond Earth.

Current chemical propulsion systems necessitate prolonged transit times for crewed Mars missions, driving the exploration of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) as a more efficient alternative to drastically reduce journey durations. NTP operates by utilizing ...

If we achieve advanced nuclear, antimatter propulsion or other advance propulsion it would be possible to achieve near constant acceleration. This would enable travel times to Mars in the 3-8 day range depending upon where Mars was in its orbit relative to ...

This relatively long transit time is a result of the use of traditional chemical rocket fuel. An alternative technology to the chemically propelled rockets the agency develops now is called nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses nuclear fission and could ...

It's still a jet engine that burns fuel but that's in a dedicated gas turbine that operates solely as a turbogenerator to create electricity at subsonic speeds. Since that's all it does, its architecture can be fairly simple. The hybrid engine system with the turbogenerator nestled between two electric-powered compression chambers for propulsion

New propulsion systems reduce shipping emissions through several key mechanisms, contributing to lower fuel consumption, increased energy efficiency, and adoption of cleaner energy sources: Hybrid systems combine traditional engines with electric motors ...