Russian engineers are betting that a radically different rocket engine can compress the long slog to Mars into something closer to an interplanetary commute. Their new plasma propulsion prototype, ...

In the relentless quest to make journeys to Mars shorter and safer, Russian scientists have recently turned heads with a bold claim: A plasma-based propulsion system could cut the Earth–Mars transit ...

Space has a trash problem, with defunct satellites, rockets, and smaller broken bits orbiting Earth at high speeds. The amount of space junk is only increasing, raising the risk of collision with ...

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 ...

Being more efficient and more powerful than chemical rockets, plasma engines are seen as the future of human spaceflight. While NASA-backed plasma rocket projects aim for travel times to Mars be just ...

The coming decades of space exploration hinge on a single, stubborn number: the 225 million kilometres between Earth and Mars ...

The big picture: In deep-space travel, the race is no longer about who has the biggest rocket – it's about who can build the smartest plasma engine. As the competition to reach Mars intensifies, ...