FIA Launches Fusion Spacecraft Propulsion Roadmap
Fusion has the potential to revolutionize space propulsion as we know it. One leg of a mission to Mars using conventional chemical propulsion can take up to nine months. In contrast, a fusion-powered spacecraft could make the trip in 90 days or less.
Fusion propulsion presents an opportunity for game-changing access to the solar system and beyond, due to its potential to provide unprecedented performance gains in power density, thrust-to-weight ratios, thrust-to-power ratios and specific impulse. This means that fusion-powered spacecraft need less fuel to reach much higher speeds and sustain the acceleration over a longer period. The decreased transit time will contribute to cheaper and safer flights, increasing the probability of mission success, especially for crewed missions. Fusion propulsion can also potentially provide the high delta-v (change in velocity a spacecraft can achieve) required to enable frequent, highly fuel efficient transport between low Earth orbit and the moon. Ultimately, it presents the only sustainable path for large scale deployment and return of both robotic and crewed missions to the wider solar system.
The Fusion Industry Association’s Space Committee, composed of companies working to commercialize fusion machines for space, has developed a Fusion Spacecraft Propulsion Roadmap, outlining critical milestones to deploy fusion-powered spacecraft and potential missions.
The roadmap identifies milestones in fusion propulsion technology to deploy fusion spacecraft in the 2030s, on par with the vast majority of fusion developers’ commercialization timelines (89% of fusion companies anticipate fusion on the grid in the 2030s or before). It emphasizes the progression from plasma thrusters to advanced fusion propulsion systems, highlighting key technologies that will enable the transition.
The performance of fusion propulsion could unlock unprecedented missions. Some examples:
- Fast crewed or heavy robotic missions to Mars, the asteroids and the outer Solar System.
- Scientific exploration of the Heliosheath in multiple directions to understand how the Sun interacts with the interstellar medium.
- Deliver a telescope to the Solar Gravitational Focal lines to observe exoplanets 100 light years away with six mile (10km) resolution.
- Explore the Oort Cloud on the edge of our solar system.
- Industrial exploitation of the Asteroid Belt for resources and off-world industries to support a cleaner Earth.
- Rapid interception of interstellar objects entering the Solar System at 31 mi/s (50 km/s) with off-ecliptic trajectories for scientific study or planetary defense.
- Position telescopes at 5 AU above the Solar System’s zodiacal dust layer.
- A fusion propulsion system could also provide very fuel efficient, reusable mega-cargo cislunar cycler spacecraft, providing economies of scale by minimizing launches from Earth and/or use of lunar resources to refuel the tug, helping support large sustained lunar presence.
Leading in fusion propulsion equates to leading in outer space. The country that develops and commercializes fusion propulsion first will globally lead advanced space capabilities.
You can read the roadmap in full below.
For those interested in the Mars travel time explanation: One leg of a mission to Mars with conventional chemical propulsion burns many thousands of tons of propellant in a few minutes, coasting for up to nine months to reach Mars. Given that the planets will move in that time, an Earth return requires a year’s wait for orbital realignment. Returning then requires the burning of another many thousands of tons of propellant to coast back for another 9 months. In contrast, a fusion-powered spacecraft could make the trip in 90 days or less, no lengthy wait for orbital alignments, with continuous burn of only hundreds of kilograms of fusion fuel and only a few hundred tons of propellant to eject. There is no need to refuel at Mars to come back. This minimizes crew exposure to cosmic radiation and enables mission abort-return scenarios during transit.
April 23, 2025
