On December 6, 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe dropped off samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback before beginning a second journey toward a smaller space rock. The spacecraft’s extended ...

Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe has suffered a malfunction in the last of its working ion engines, an official of the country's ...

Space debris is a growing threat to satellites and missions, with over 14,000 pieces already cluttering low-Earth orbit. To address this, Kazunori Takahashi, a researcher at Tohoku University in Japan ...

CLEVELAND — A small robotic surveyor arrives to explore a near-Earth asteroid. Another robotic spacecraft is returning to Earth with a pristine comet surface sample. Meanwhile, a robotic explorer is ...

A new ion engine has been tested in a lab, proving itself to be 25 times more powerful than NASA's current state-of-the-art one. This advanced technology could one day assist humans in reaching Mars.

The only working ion engine on Japan's Hayabusa2 unmanned probe, which is on an extended mission to its new target asteroid ...

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Over the last several months, we’ve been enjoying a front-row seat as [Jay Bowles] of Plasma Channel has been developing and perfecting his design for a high voltage multi-stage ionic thruster. With ...