NASA is making a powerful new ion engine to send astronauts to Mars — and it just passed its 1st test

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. Ion engines are very different to the usual sort of thrusters that burn chemical propellant. Using electromagnetic fields, they accelerate ions — charged atoms — out through a nozzle to provide thrust, hence they are often described as using "electric propulsion." Though they are slow at first, …