Science & Technology

NASA's mysterious EMDrive still seems to work

By T.K. Randall
November 7, 2015 ·  49 comments

The EMDrive could make it possible to reach Mars within just ten weeks. Image Credit: NASA The electromagnetic propulsion engine, which some scientists believe could herald a new era of spaceflight by replacing conventional chemical rocket engines, has been a hot topic recently, not least because there has been a lot of confusion over whether it actually works at all.

Having been testing the drive now for over twelve months, NASA scientists had previously concluded that it was "producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon."

Since then updates on the matter have remained sporadic and unclear, with some news reports suggesting that scientists had discounted the engine entirely or that it wasn't quite what it seemed.Now however the space agency has released an official update revealing that the EMDrive does actually work - even though efforts to explain how it works have continued to remain unsuccessful.

"I will tell you that we first built and installed a second generation, closed face magnetic damper that reduced the stray magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber by at least an order of magnitude and any Lorentz force interactions it could produce," said NASA's Paul March.

"And yet the anomalous thrust signals remain."

If tests continue to confirm the capabilities of the EMDrive then it could eventually make it possible for us to travel around the solar system within a matter of weeks instead of months or years.

Source: Yahoo! news | Comments (49)

Tags: EMDrive, NASA