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NASA fires up a lithium-fed thruster at 120 kilowatts — the most powerful electric engine the agency has ever tested for trips to Mars

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 ...
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NASA tests new, super powerful engine

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 ...
Phys.org

Blue Origin moon lander completes testing at NASA vacuum chamber

Also known as Endurance, MK1 is an uncrewed cargo lander. It's a commercial demonstration mission to advance Human Landing System capabilities in support of NASA's Artemis program. The tests in ...
Gizmodo

NASA’s Lithium-Fed Nuclear Thruster Flares to Life in First of Its Kind Test

NASA engineers recently tested a next-generation electric propulsion system that could one day power a crewed mission to Mars. NASA fired up a prototype of its electromagnetic thruster inside a vacuum ...
techtimes

The Mandalorian and Grogu Depicts Real Ion Propulsion: NASA’s Psyche Used at Mars Two Days Before LA Premiere

The Mandalorian & Grogu arrived at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on May 14, 2026 — the night before NASA's Psyche spacecraft executed a gravity-assist flyby of Mars using a xenon-fueled ion ...