Seems the Russians have built a serious ion engine that could cut the time down
to get to Mars from months to 30-60 days if their tech proves to be real.
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 a plasma propulsion engine they claim could propel a spacecraft to Mars in roughly 30 to 60 days.
The concept replaces fiery combustion with electromagnetically accelerated plasma, which is essentially a stream of ionized hydrogen atoms catapulted from the engine at breathtaking speed. At just 6 newtons, the design has a modest thrust figure when compared to a traditional rocket engine, but it's around 60x stronger than other ion thrusters like NASA's Dawn. With its steady push applied for weeks on end, it could achieve staggering final velocities.
Lab tests showed that the charged particles achieved staggering speeds of around 100 kilometers per second (62 miles per second). To put it into perspective, that's roughly 25 times faster than traditional chemical rockets. The efficiency of the system is the impressive part, not the high particle speeds. Instead of burning through tons of propellant in minutes, the plasma drive acts as more of a sustained energy release that continuously converts cleaner nuclear-powered electricity into forward motion.
Moving slow to move fast applies. :)
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