After months of heated debate and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system appears to work. Tests carried out by both NASA and independent researchers confirmed that the drive was able to produce thrust in a vacuum that would allow us to reach the moon in just four hours, Mars in 70 days, and Pluto in just 18 months.
READ FURTHER ON MOTHERBOARD | VICE
Ref: Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum. Journal of Propulsion and Power (17 November 2016) | DOI: 10.2514/1.B36120 | PDF (Open Access)
ABSTRACT
A vacuum test campaign evaluating the impulsive thrust performance of a tapered radio-frequency test article excited in the transverse magnitude 212 mode at 1937 MHz has been completed. The test campaign consisted of a forward thrust phase and reverse thrust phase at less than 8×10−6 torr vacuum with power scans at 40, 60, and 80 W. The test campaign included a null thrust test effort to identify any mundane sources of impulsive thrust; however, none were identified. Thrust data from forward, reverse, and null suggested that the system was consistently performing with a thrust-to-power ratio of 1.2 ± 0.1 mN/kW.