The new rocket engine could cut travel time to Mars from years to months

A private company is working with the US space agency NASA to develop a new rocket that could greatly reduce space travel time.

The engine for such a rocket would be designed to significantly increase the amount of thrust to speed up space travel and improve the rocket effectiveness.

Thrust is the force that propels a spacecraft through the air. It is produced by one pushing the system. Generally, a gas or liquid fuel is burned to produce thrust from the back of a spacecraft to propel it forward at high speed.

The new design, called the Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), is being developed by Arizona-based company Howe Industries. The company is currently in the early stages of studying the technology before building working engine models.

In a recent statement, Howe Industries said such rocket technology will be needed to support NASA’s plans to return humans to the Moon and after that, possibly to Mars. The space agency has also set a goal to build a long-term base in space. But one obstacle to all these plans is the long travel time required with current spacecraft systems.

NASA estimates that the moon is located an average of 382,500 kilometers from Earth. The exact distance varies due to the moon’s orbit around the Earth. The average distance from Earth to Mars is 225 million kilometers.

NASA says a trip to Mars with existing spacecraft would take at least 200 days each way. Developers of the proposed Pulsed Plasma rocket have said it could cut travel time to the Red Planet to about two months each way.

Howe Industries said its new design gives the rocket the ability to reach extremely high speeds to complete reasonable space travel times. The development team estimates that its PPR system can produce up to 100,000 N of thrust. The N at the end of the number stands for Newton, a unit of measurement for thrust.

NASA has described its Space Launch System (SLS) as the most powerful ever built. The agency has said that the SLS rocket system is expected to provide about 53 N of thrust during the journey into space.

PPR developers say that in addition to a large increase in thrust, the new model also offers a specific impulse rate of 5,000. Specific impulse is a method for measuring in seconds the thrust and efficiency levels of rocket engines. The higher this rate, the more efficient the missile system. By comparison, the SLS rocket has specific impulse rates below 500.

Officials at Howe have said the PPR is based on another plasma-based technology known as pulsed separation fusion. NASA says this process involves rapidly compressing plasma at high pressures to produce thrust. But developers say the PPR system is smaller, simpler and costs less to operate.

Howes statement introducing the technology said the combination of extremely high thrust and the highest rate of specific impulse keeps POTENTiAL to revolutionize space exploration.

The team said such a system should be able to propel much heavier spacecraft and support much longer journeys to more distant regions of space. The planned system could also make it easier to equip spacecraft with heavy shields to protect traveling astronauts from galactic cosmic rays. These are highly energetic particles that move through space at almost the speed of light. The rays can be harmful to humans in large amounts.

The PPR project is one of a series of NASA development projects that recently received additional funding to continue operations. The projects are part of a NASA program called Advanced Innovative Concepts (NIAC).

PPR is currently in PHASE I of development. The team said that if selected by NASA to proceed with Phase II, it will focus on improving the performance of the proposed engine as well as conducting experiments on the engine’s key systems. The final phase will involve finalizing a spacecraft design to transport humans to Mars.

I’m Bryan Lynn

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from NASA and Howe Industries.

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The words in this story

EFFICIENT adj. working well and not wasting time or energy

pushing n. a force that pushes something forward

plasma n. a collection of charged particles

POTENTiAL n. possible

PHASE n. a specific period during which something happens