{"id":20500,"date":"2016-01-06T10:46:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T18:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/nasas-new-vasimr-plasma-engine-could-reach-mars-in-39-days"},"modified":"2017-04-24T23:10:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T06:10:05","slug":"nasas-new-vasimr-plasma-engine-could-reach-mars-in-39-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/nasas-new-vasimr-plasma-engine-could-reach-mars-in-39-days","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New VASIMR Plasma Engine Could Reach Mars in 39 days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TiZuG9K_xso?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>NASA recently provided $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster capable of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA\u2019s funding was part of the \u201c<a title=\"Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/nextstep\/\">12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership<\/a>.\u201d Ad Astra\u2019s rocket will travel ten times faster than today\u2019s chemical rockets while using one-tenth the amount of fuel.<\/p>\n<p>The VASIMR system would cut the trip to Mars by months according to Franklin Chang Diaz, a former MIT student, NASA astronaut, and now CEO of Ad Astra.<\/p>\n<p>According to Diaz, \u201cthis is like no other rocket that you may have seen in the past. It is a plasma rocket. The VASIMR Rocket is not used for launching things; it is used for things already in orbit. This is called \u201cin-space propulsion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.industrytap.com\/nasas-new-vasimr-plasma-engine-reach-mars-39-days\/33646\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA recently provided $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster capable of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA\u2019s funding was part of the \u201c12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership.\u201d Ad Astra\u2019s rocket [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44680,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20500\/revisions\/44680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}