Star Trek — as much as we love it — was guilty sometimes of a bit of hyperbole and more than its share of inconsistency. In some episodes, ion drives were advanced technology and in others they were ...

The BepiColombo Mercury probe is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The probe is intended to study Mercury's magnetic field, ...

The QinetiQ-engineered Solar Electric Propulsion System (SEPS) on board BepiColombo, the joint ESA/JAXA spacecraft on a mission to Mercury, has now begun propelling the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) ...

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission is on its way to Mercury, but instead of coasting to the smallest planet in the Solar System, it will be helped along by four state-of-the-art ion thrusters developed ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The BepiColombo mission to Mercury that left Earth on Oct. 19 has a long, seven-year journey ...

A ground-breaking Solar Electric Propulsion System (SEPS) developed and manufactured by an industrial consortium led by British company QinetiQ, will provide the engine power behind the BepiColombo ...

European Space Agency scientists have given the go-ahead to build an ion-powered engine for the agency’s spacecraft set to fly to Mercury in 2013. The ion-powered engine in the BepiColumbo spacecraft ...

The simplest way to explain the space exploration benefit of an ion thruster over a rocket is to compare them in simple “Tortoise and the Hare” style: The faster of the two – in this case, the rocket ...

A camera onboard the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft photographs astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. during his historic flight on February 20, 1962. An engineer and a technician check out an ion engine in ...

The UK's Qinetiq is working on ways to improve the performance of ion optic systems (IOS) in gridded ion engines. Ion engines are considered ideal for deep space missions because of their very low ...

ESA's BepiColombo spacecraft has fired up all four of its ion thrusters as it begins the first of 22 burn arcs. The high-tech engines that use xenon as a propellant were powered up on December 17 at 1 ...