Jump to content
  • Sign Up
×
×
  • Create New...

[NASA] NASA Fires Up Powerful Lithium-Fed Thruster for Trips to Mars

SpaceMan

By SpaceMan,
in World News

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Diamond Member
SpaceMan Hunter

SpaceMan 0

Posted
  • Diamond Member
Posted
A prototype of a lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic thruster was tested in a special chamber at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February 2026. With further development, thrusters like this could be part of a nuclear electric propulsion system powering human missions to Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A technology that could propel crewed missions to Mars and robotic spacecraft throughout the solar system was recently put to the test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. On Feb. 24, for the first time in years and at power levels exceeding any previous test in the United States, a team fired up an electromagnetic thruster that runs on lithium metal vapor.

This prototype achieved power levels beyond the highest-power electric thrusters on any of the agency’s current spacecraft. Valuable data from the first firing of this thruster will help inform an upcoming series of tests.

“At NASA, we work on many things at once, and we haven’t lost sight of Mars. The successful performance of our thruster in this test demonstrates real progress toward sending an American astronaut to set foot on the Red Planet,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “This marks the first time in the United States that an electric propulsion system has operated at power levels this high, reaching up to 120 kilowatts. We will continue to make strategic investments that will propel that next giant leap.”

This is the hidden content, please
JPL senior research scientist James Polk peers into the condensable metal propellant (CoMeT) vacuum facility at JPL’s Electric Propulsion Lab, where a high-power electric thruster prototype his team developed was being put to the test in February 2026.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

During five ignitions, the tungsten electrode at the thruster’s center glowed bright white, reaching over 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius). The work was conducted in JPL’s

This is the hidden content, please
, home to the condensable metal propellant vacuum facility, a unique national asset for safely testing electric thrusters that use metal vapor propellants at up to megawatt-class power levels.

Powering up

Electric propulsion uses up to 90% less propellant than traditional, high-thrust chemical rockets. Current electric propulsion thrusters, like those powering NASA’s

This is the hidden content, please
mission, use solar power to accelerate propellants, producing a low, continuous thrust that reaches high speeds over time. NASA JPL is testing a lithium-fed
This is the hidden content, please
, a technology that has been researched since the 1960s but never flown operationally. The MPD engine differs from existing thrusters by using high currents interacting with a magnetic field to electromagnetically accelerate lithium plasma.

This is the hidden content, please
The prototype thruster is enclosed in JPL’s condensable metal propellant (CoMeT) vacuum facility, a unique national asset designed to safely test thrusters using metal-vapor propellants as part of potential megawatt-class electric propulsion systems.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

During the test, the team achieved power levels of up to 120 kilowatts. That’s over 25 times the power of the thrusters on Psyche, which is

This is the hidden content, please
the highest-power electric thrusters of any NASA spacecraft. In the vacuum of space, the gentle but steady force Psyche’s thrusters provide over time accelerates the spacecraft to 124,000 mph.

“Designing and building these thrusters over the last couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test,” said James Polk, senior research scientist at JPL. “It’s a huge moment for us because we not only showed the thruster works, but we also hit the power levels we were targeting. And we know we have a good testbed to begin addressing the challenges to scaling up.”

Going electric

To view the test, Polk peered through a small portal into the 26-foot-long (8-meter-long) water-cooled vacuum chamber. Inside, the thruster flared to life, its nozzle-shaped outer electrode glowing incandescent as it emitted a vibrant red plume. Polk has researched lithium-fed MPD thrusters for decades, having worked on NASA’s

This is the hidden content, please
mission and the agency’s
This is the hidden content, please
, the first demonstration of electric propulsion beyond Earth orbit.

The team aims to reach power levels between 500 kilowatts and 1 megawatt per thruster in coming years. Because the hardware operates at such high temperatures, proving the components can withstand the heat over many hours of testing will be a key challenge. A human mission to Mars might need 2 to 4 megawatts of power, requiring multiple MPD thrusters, which would have to operate for more than 23,000 hours.

Lithium-fed MPD thrusters have the potential to operate at high power levels, use propellant efficiently, and provide significantly greater thrust than currently flying electric thrusters. Fully developed and paired with a nuclear power source, they could reduce launch mass and support payloads required for human Mars missions.

The MPD thruster work, in development for the past 2½ years, is led by JPL in collaboration with Princeton University in New Jersey and NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. It is funded by NASA’s

This is the hidden content, please
project, which in 2020 began supporting a megawatt-class nuclear electric propulsion program for human Mars missions by focusing on five critical technology elements, of which the electric propulsion subsystem is one. The project, based at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is part of the NASA’s
This is the hidden content, please
.

To learn about NASA’s nuclear efforts, visit:

This is the hidden content, please

Media Contact

Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
*****@*****.tld

2026-026

Explore More

This is the hidden content, please

0

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Vote for the server

    To vote for this server you must login.

    Jim Carrey Flirting GIF

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

Important Information

Privacy Notice: We utilize cookies to optimize your browsing experience and analyze website traffic. By consenting, you acknowledge and agree to our Cookie Policy, ensuring your privacy preferences are respected.

  I accept