Jeff Thornburg helped turn a government research project into SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now, he’s trying to do the same thing at his startup Portal Space Systems, which is taking an idea ...

Elon Musk is the face of SpaceX — but rockets don’t fly on vision alone. Behind the scenes was Tom Mueller, the engineer who designed the engines that actually made SpaceX work. Before SpaceX, he was ...

A little more than two months ago, a Rocket Lab employee called the Stennis Space Center Fire Department from the nearby E3 test stand. There was a grass fire where Archimedes engines undergo testing.

Being more efficient and more powerful than chemical rockets, plasma engines are seen as the future of human spaceflight. While NASA-backed plasma rocket projects aim for travel times to Mars be just ...