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 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 ...

There's no air to breathe, it's 400 degrees Celsius and you are six long years away from home. Welcome to Mercury, the smallest and perhaps most mysterious planet in the Solar System. The European ...

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) ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...