For decades, such possibilities have remained theoretical, like something plucked out of a science fiction novel. But several companies are now working to build practical nuclear fusion propulsion engines, with significant milestones being hit.
Richard Dinan, the CEO of Pulsar Fusion, displays the Sunbird spacecraft at the company's facility in Bletchley, England. (Image credit: Pulsar Fusion)
If any of these efforts prove successful, missions across the solar system for robots and humans could be unlocked like never before, turning us into a true spacefaring species.
But is it too good to be true? Can the dream of nuclear fusion propulsion ever be fully realized, or will it remain a sketchbook fantasy? After decades of dreaming, we might be on the cusp of finding out.
If this process could be replicated on Earth, it would provide us with huge amounts of energy. "The holy grail is free energy for everyone," Lintner said. Entire cities and countries would be transformed, bringing about a new age of clean and abundant power.
If you take the same concept and put it in space, you suddenly have a means to power a spacecraft. What's more, the same problems with sustaining the plasma don't arise. Instead, the plasma can be fired out of the spacecraft, providing a steady thrust that can be used to accelerate a spacecraft to enormous speeds in the frictionless vacuum of space.
A fusion-powered spacecraft could be accelerated to hundreds — or even thousands — of miles per second through this method, multiple times faster than any spacecraft in history. In the most optimistic scenario, such a spacecraft could reach significant fractions of light speed, making interstellar travel a possibility.
Fusion propulsion in some ways is harder, and in some ways is easier, than terrestrial energy production.
Producing meaningful thrust requires staggering numbers of fusion reactions every second. A quintillion reactions would provide about 10 newtons of thrust — equivalent to the weight of a 1-liter bottle of water in your hand. But a fusion-powered engine would provide this thrust for months, rather than minutes for typical chemical propulsion, allowing large speeds to be reached eventually.
First plasma
In March, Pulsar Fusion demonstrated "first plasma" inside a nuclear fusion engine for the first time. In the test, which took place at the company's facility in Bletchley, one of Pulsar's Sunbird engines briefly transformed krypton gas into a plasma, demonstrating how the company might confine plasma within its exhaust system.
A display model of a Pulsar Sunbird engine, which briefly transformed krypton gas into a plasma in March. (Image credit: Pulsar Fusion.)
Dinan founded Pulsar Fusion in 2011 with the goal of building a fusion-powered propulsion system. The company's plan is to fuse helium-3 and deuterium, a lighter form of helium and a heavier form of hydrogen, and use the energy produced to heat helium-4 and expel it as propellant to produce thrust. The amount of thrust that can be produced depends on "how good you are at diverting those particles out the back of the spacecraft," Dinan said. "And right now, nobody knows how efficient we can be."
If they can make it work, their plans are ambitious. The company imagines fleets of its Sunbird vehicles traversing the solar system, taking people and cargo to and from destinations at speeds of up to 329,000 mph (529,000 km/h) — about 10 times faster than the Voyager 1 spacecraft currently traveling outside the solar system.
"I think we will see fusion as a propulsion system pretty soon," Dinan said. "The demand is certainly there."
Cohen and his team have been investigating this concept for more than 20 years. Their idea is to fuse deuterium and helium-3, which is rare on Earth but abundant on the moon. His team has built a prototype fusion thruster at Princeton with plasma that reaches 18 million F (10 million C).
Using their current plasma, Cohen claims the team has demonstrated a small amount of thrust — a few milligrams, or a few hundred-thousandths of a newton. Now, they hope to get more funding to take their concept further. "We need a few million dollars to start things off," Cohen said.
Helicity Space is targeting a launch of its fusion propulsion system in the 2030s. The company, which raised $5 million in 2023, is developing the Helicity Drive, which relies on pulses of plasma, rather than continuous fusion, to provide thrust.
An artist's illustration of Helicity Space's Helicity Drive. (Image credit: NASA/Ryan Weed)Lintner said the company is aiming "for fusion temperatures very, very soon," and is then "planning on flying a first prototype within three years." By the 2030s, Lintner hopes to reach net gain in its fusion engines — producing more energy than is put in — to have a true fusion drive ready for use in space.
Going interstellar
"It still relies on scientific discovery for us to push it," Srinivasan said. "We need to figure out, how do we keep this fuel stable? Have we sorted a lot of the engineering and scientific challenges? It's not going to happen next year."
Other forms of nuclear propulsion might be more promising. NASA is developing SR-1 Freedom, a spacecraft powered by nuclear fission, not fusion. The goal for the spacecraft, announced in March, is to launch to Mars by December 2028, where three small robotic helicopters would be sent to explore the surface. The fission reactor would split uranium-235 to generate thrust.
The planned flight trajectory of the SR-1 Freedom craft. (Image credit: NASA)However, fission-based propulsion, while extremely useful, cannot match the speeds promised by fusion propulsion. That's because fusion systems magnetically confine the plasma, meaning much higher temperatures can be reached. Fission temperatures, by contrast, are limited by the materials of the reactor where the fission reactions take place.
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Many more destinations would be within reach if fusion propulsion were to become a reality. Perhaps even interstellar travel would be possible much further down the line. "People have known that fusion is the answer to deep-space travel since the 1960s," Lintner said. "It's only in the last decade that, commercially, people started to spend a lot of time on cracking the fusion code."
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