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 ...

A laboratory in Troitsk, Russia, may have just nudged humanity closer to interplanetary commuting. Scientists at Rosatom, the country's state nuclear corporation, have revealed a working prototype of ...

In the relentless quest to make journeys to Mars shorter and safer, Russian scientists have recently turned heads with a bold claim: A plasma-based propulsion system could cut the Earth–Mars transit ...

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