Scientists have successfully tested a material design for light sails using photonic crystals that could achieve 20% the speed of light ...

Researchers from Tuskegee University, Alabama, have developed a new photonic crystal (a kind of ...

Most space missions rely on chemical rockets for propulsion. Rockets must carry fuel, which increases spacecraft mass and limits their speed and travel distance. For decades, researchers have explored ...

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The researchers at Tuskegee University, Alabama, reported their work in the Journal of Nanophotonics, confirming that they developed a photonic crystal light sail designed to address these limitations ...

When NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed on Mars in February last year, it had travelled for more than six months in the harsh environment of interplanetary space. In that time, it experienced huge ...

There are many wonderful places we’d like to visit in the universe, and probably untold numbers more that we haven’t even seen or heard of yet. Unfortunately…they’re all so darn far away. A ...

Faster forms of spacecraft propulsion have been a dream for decades, but now one researcher thinks he has a solid idea. Known as directed energy propulsion, it would involve firing a laser at a tiny ...

This is one of the idea outcomes of a 2018 NASA challenge for transporting a 1000kg payload to Mars in 45 days, as opposed to much longer via chemical rockets, even Starship. The physics seem ...

Adapting the concept of interstellar laser sailing for Earth orbital maneuvering and solar system exploration, researchers propose that the fundamental advantages of laser propulsion are manifested at ...