On December 6, 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe dropped off samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback before beginning a second journey toward a smaller space rock. The spacecraft’s extended ...

Space debris is a growing threat to satellites and missions, with over 14,000 pieces already cluttering low-Earth orbit. To address this, Kazunori Takahashi, a researcher at Tohoku University in Japan ...

mileage on the engine increases. That wisdom does not hold true for NASA’s ion engine, whose odometer continues to spin to the delight of its owners. This little engine that could has more than made ...

Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe has suffered a malfunction in the last of its working ion engines, an official of the country's ...

The only working ion engine on Japan's Hayabusa2 unmanned probe, which is on an extended mission to its new target asteroid ...

CLEVELAND — A small robotic surveyor arrives to explore a near-Earth asteroid. Another robotic spacecraft is returning to Earth with a pristine comet surface sample. Meanwhile, a robotic explorer is ...

The technology belongs to a class known as atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP). These systems collect the extremely thin air in front of a spacecraft (or, in some cases, a missile) and ...