Solar flare-style rocket thruster ‘could send astronauts to outer solar system’ – Professional Engineering

PPPL physicist Fatima Ebrahimi in front of an artist’s impression of the fusion rocket (Credit: Elle Starkman (PPPL Office of Communications) and ITER)
A new type of rocket thruster that replicates the mechanism behind solar flares could send humans to Mars and beyond, a researcher has claimed.
Fatima Ebrahimi, a principal research physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey, proposed the concept. The thruster would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma to…

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