Project Orion was a real Cold War proposal to propel spacecraft using nuclear explosions. Engineers planned to detonate small nuclear “pulse units” behind a massive pusher plate to create thrust. Each ...

Mars has always felt like a distant neighbor, reachable only after a long, risky cruise through deep space. Now engineers inside NASA are sketching a very different future, one where a nuclear powered ...

Plasma engines could be the future of human space travel, and Russia’s “manetoplasma rockets” have the most ambitious travel goals ...

NASA engineers have completed first cold-flow tests of a full-scale nuclear thermal propulsion reactor, validating designs ...

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