Hundred times hotter than the core of the Sun, this country's rocket engine leaves American and Chinese rockets in the dust

Pulsar Fusion - The UK's ambitious aerospace company has just made a shocking announcement in the astronomy world when it started to manufacture  a nuclear fusion rocket engine , promising to open a completely new era of space exploration for humanity when it can shorten interplanetary travel time in the Solar System.

Pulsar Fusion hopes that, with  its Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) rocket engine, this new production rocket will reach a super speed of 805,000km/h (equivalent to 223,611 meters/second); as well as possess the hottest temperature in the Solar System - meaning that this rocket's engine is capable of generating temperatures hundreds of times hotter than the core of the Sun (specifically below).

If the test is successful, the British DFD-powered rocket will become the fastest rocket in history, surpassing both the US and China. Specifically, NASA said that the latest US SLS super rocket has a maximum speed of 9,700 meters per second. Meanwhile, China's most powerful rocket today, the Long March 5, has a maximum speed of 7,777 meters per second -  Time Magazine  reported.

To achieve those groundbreaking goals, Pulsar Fusion will harness the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers our Sun.

Scientists say nuclear fusion propulsion technology has the potential to revolutionize space travel in both speed and fuel usage.

Reactions similar to those that power the Sun could help humanity cut the travel time to Mars in half; or make the journey to Saturn and its moons in just two years instead of eight.

Model of the world's largest nuclear fusion rocket engine. (Photo: Pulsar Fusion).

Nuclear fusion combines two atoms to release large amounts of energy. Scientists believe the process could create endless, carbon-free energy to replace fossil fuels.

'Humanity has a huge appetite for faster propulsion as the space economy grows, and nuclear fusion powers rocket engines that are 1,000 times more powerful than conventional ion thrusters currently used in orbit,' said Richard Dinan, CEO and founder of Pulsar Fusion. 

Engine Wonder: Recreating the Sun Inside a Rocket!

It's incredibly exciting, but not everyone is convinced it will work, because: The technology requires extreme temperatures and pressures to work. 

The key to fusion power is generating sustained heat. Pulsar Fusion's new direct-drive (DFD) fusion rocket engine – under construction at a test facility in Bletchley, UK – promises to reach several hundred million degrees, generating temperatures hundreds of times hotter than the core of the Sun.

[The surface temperature of the Sun is about 5,537 degrees Celsius, while the temperature inside the Sun's core is about 15 million degrees Celsius].

Engineers say the fusion chamber, about 8 meters long, is expected to launch with the rocket in 2027.

This 8-meter-long fusion chamber promises to house an "artificial sun" inside. (Photo: Pulsar Fusion).

Fusion reactors generate energy, creating a plasma of charged particles. Those energized particles are converted into thrust using rotating magnetic fields. But confining the superheated plasma with electromagnetic fields is a major challenge.

To better understand the complex plasma, the company is using machine learning (ML) to study data from the US PFRC-2 fusion reactor. The simulations will assess the performance of the fusion plasma on thrust as it exits the rocket engine, ejecting exhaust particles at hundreds of kilometers per second. In other words, AI will help optimize the magnetic fields needed to confine the fusion plasma and power the rocket engine.

Recreating an artificial sun inside a rocket isn't easy . At the heart of a nuclear fusion reactor is an extremely hot plasma, locked inside an electromagnetic field, and scientists are continuing to figure out how to do this in a stable and safe way.

"The challenge is learning how to contain and confine the superheated plasma within the electromagnetic field, " Dr James Lambert, Pulsar Fusion's chief financial officer, told  Space Daily . "The plasma behaves like a weather system, which is extremely difficult to predict using conventional techniques. Scientists have been unable to control the chaotic plasma because it is heated to hundreds of millions of degrees and is constantly changing. This 'unpredictability' is due to the plasma's constantly changing state."

The revolution that took humanity out of the Solar System

Despite the challenges, recent breakthroughs have brought the journey to creating an artificial sun closer to reality. For example, in December 2022, scientists created the first fusion reaction that produced more energy than was needed to start the reaction, a milestone that was hailed as 'one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.'

Richard Dinan, owner of Pulsar Fusion. (Photo: Pulsar Fusion).

At Pulsar Fusion, hope is fueled by new advances in AI. Pulsar Fusion is actively collaborating with  the Princeton Satellite System (USA)  to use supercomputer simulations to better understand how plasmas will behave under electromagnetic confinement.

'Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) rocket engines are truly a game-changing technology that allows us to reach deep space destinations much faster and with the massive amount of power we can do even more science when we reach other planets,' said Stephanie Thomas, Vice President of Princeton Satellite Systems.

The next step will be an orbital demonstration, when, expected in 2027, Pulsar Fusion will launch a nuclear fusion-powered propulsion system into space for the first time.

Pulsar Fusion is the first company to plan to develop a nuclear fusion rocket engine and then a land-based fusion power plant. (Photo: Pulsar Fusion).

Pulsar Fusion plans to demonstrate that its rocket can reach fusion temperatures by 2027. If the tests are successful, the company will be one step closer to creating the world's first commercial fusion-based engine.

Richard Dinan, the boss of Pulsar Fusion, is taking steps to realize his dream of empowering humans to leave the Solar System one day.  "If we want to leave the Solar System within a human lifetime, there is no other technology that we know of that can do it, other than this technology,"  Richard Dinan believes.

Along with making space travel much shorter, nuclear fusion also promises to provide clean, virtually unlimited energy for life here on Earth.