BepiColombo, the joint ESA/JAXA spacecraft on a mission to Mercury, is now firing its thrusters for the first time in flight. On Sunday, BepiColombo carried out the first successful manoeuver using ...

Rockets might be fiery fun, but they’re big, bulky, and heavy. Ion thrusters, sci-fi as they sound, are real and these penny-sized ones are probably the future of steering small satellites in orbit.

When it comes to space exploration, large vehicles get most of the press -- but a team on KickStarter wants to build an engine that could power nanoscale satellites on their own journeys of ...

What do scanning electron microscopes and satellites have in common? On the face of things, not much, but after seeing [Zachary Tong]’s latest video on liquid metal ion thrusters, we see that they ...

A rendezvous with the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche is scheduled for 2029. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Breaking space news, the ...

The lower box is one the earliest spacecraft ion thrusters (from EOS circa 1962), and on top is a new arrival, a modern marvel from the SpaceX Starlink satellites used for on orbit maneuvering. SpaceX ...

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Pale Blue was awarded grants worth up to $27 million from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to develop miniature water-based ion and Hall-effect thrusters ...