Development

A plasma thruster runs at twenty-five times Psyche's power

development2026-05-03

Claim

NASA tested a lithium-vapour plasma thruster at a record 120 kilowatts, twenty-five times the power of the Psyche spacecraft's drives, on the road to the multi-megawatt thrust required for crewed Mars missions.

Reported metric: 120 kW

Reporting date: 2026-05-03 (not necessarily the event date)

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

Welcome to May 3, 2026 (theinnermostloop.substack.com)

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Reported in

Welcome to May 3, 2026

Actor

NASA

Evidence for

Generated worlds become inhabitable

Supersedes

A pay package is tied to delivering 100 terawatts of compute from space

Referenced by

Cite or correct this record

Citation formatCitation text

A plasma thruster runs at twenty-five times Psyche's power
Innermost Loop KB — secondary record
Reporting date: 2026-05-03
KB permalink: https://nicholsn.github.io/innermost-loop-kb/developments/2026-05-03-a-plasma-thruster-at-120-kilowatts
Claim: NASA tested a lithium-vapour plasma thruster at a record 120 kilowatts, twenty-five times the power of the Psyche spacecraft's drives, on the road to the multi-megawatt thrust required for crewed Mars missions.
Attributed sources:
- Welcome to May 3, 2026 — https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/welcome-to-may-3-2026
This citation does not imply independent verification of linked-source claims.

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