New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions

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A spacecraft powered by a positron reactor would resemble this artists concept of the Mars Reference Mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA
A spacecraft powered by a positron reactor would resemble this artist's concept of the Mars Reference Mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA

Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about one-thousandth the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy).


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