NASA has achieved one more milestone in space travel. Their new electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive could serve as a 'remote', which helps in journeys within the solar system. At NASA's Johnson Space Centre, the drive was tested and found to be successful.

The EM propulsion drive was tested by the team in hard vacuum. It was not done in earlier studies, which only emphasized on natural atmospheric conditions.

The drive in hard vacuum evidently went against the Newtonian Law of Physics i. e. the Newton's Law of Conservation of Momentum, since the drive was kept in a close chamber. The EM drive will help make space journey faster, which is helpful for space missions and new discoveries. The drive will help the transport of a spacecraft to the moon in few hours and a visit to Mars, may take just 70 days, according to NASA's official page (NASASpaceFlight. com).

NASA's Eagleworks propulsion team carried out the study. The team has the goal to create a device, which will work in closed cavity, converting electrical energy to motion without the requirement of fuel.

The study on EM drive is still carried on in different agencies, universities and institutions all over the world. They all have one specific objective i. e. to come up with a propellant-free propulsion system. Methods that involved electromagnetic microwaves to generate electrical energy were used by teams from America, UK and China.

According to the Head if the Eagleworks group, Dr. Richard White, "EM Drive's thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum behaving like propellant ions behave in a Magneto Hydro Dynamics drive for spacecraft propulsion". He added that there is no need of the propellant expulsion in order to stabilize the momentum changes of a spacecraft.