On February 24, 2026, inside a specialized vacuum chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers fed lithium metal vapor into a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster and pushed it ...

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft successfully completed the first test of its ion propulsion system over the weekend. The system is vital to the success of Dawn’s 8-year, 1.6 billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) ...

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NASA just nudged its Mars ambitions forward with a lab test of a new ion engine that vastly outmuscles anything it's flown before. The lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster hit 120 kilowatts ...