The explosive pressure of the detonation pushes the exhaust out the open end of the cylinder, providing thrust to the vehicle. Marshall's industry partners have designed, built and successfully tested subscale pulse detonation rocket engines using hydrogen and oxygen gas as propellant. Antimatter, Fusion and Fission Exotic, high-energy propulsion will be required to travel to the outer planets and other star systems. Antimatter propulsion could leap from science fiction to scientific fact. Because of its superior energy density, antimatter annihilation is often suggested as the ultimate source of energy for propulsion.
Antimatter is identical to matter except that particles' electrical charges are reversed.
A proton is positive, whereas an antiproton is negative. When regular matter collides with antimatter, they annihilate each other and produce phenomenal energy. In an antimatter engine, the charged particles would be channeled out the back of a spacecraft to produce thrust. The Trap will be used in future antimatter experiments for space propulsion. The Marshall Center is also developing fusion and fission propulsion concepts to tap their potentially high-performance capabilities.