Getting to and moving through outer space is not an easy task – anything wishing to leave Terra Firma must first have enough power to escape Earth’s gravitational pull, and then it needs yet more power to thrust itself about the cosmos. Rockets are still necessary for liftoff, but the future of space navigation may be very different based on a study presented by NASA at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference July 30: Using a conceptual model, they found that an otherwise “impossible” microwave engine was able to produce a measurable amount of thrust.

The revolutionary part? The engine requires no liquid or solid propellant, and would be powered by solar electricity.

“Approximately 30-50 micro-Newtons of thrust were recorded from an electric propulsion test article consisting primarily of a radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity excited at approximately 935 megahertz. Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure,” the researchers wrote in their abstract.

For their part, NASA has not yet deigned to comment on how the device works, only that it appears to do so. “This paper will not address the physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster, but instead will describe the test integration, test operations, and the results obtained from the test campaign,” they wrote. In other words, they aren’t entirely sure how it produces thrust, especially given that one of the two test articles was configured not to, but did anyway.

Expect the results and findings to be scrutinized intensely in the coming weeks – while similar configurations have been proposed in the past, most of the community is skeptical of them. If it does indeed stand up to further testing, however, the cost of satellites and other spacecraft will plummet dramatically, not to mention any potential for pushing the boundaries of space travel in terms of speed and distance.