Forward-looking: British startup Pulsar Fusion has unveiled its ambitious nuclear fusion rocket concept, Sunbird, designed to dramatically shorten interplanetary travel times. Developed in secret over the past decade, the project aims to cut the journey to Mars in half and reach Pluto in just four years. With ground testing scheduled for 2025 and an orbital demonstration planned for 2027, Sunbird could mark a bold leap forward in next-generation propulsion technology.

Unlike conventional chemical rockets, Sunbird relies on nuclear fusion – a process that replicates the energy production at the core of stars – to propel spacecraft. Rather than operating independently, these fusion-powered vehicles are designed to attach to larger spacecraft, towing payloads efficiently across vast interplanetary distances.

Fusion propulsion builds on Pulsar Fusion’s prior collaborations with major academic institutions. In 2023, the company partnered with the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge on UK Space Agency-funded projects exploring integrated nuclear fission systems for electric propulsion.

“We have recently commissioned not one, but two of the largest space propulsion testing chambers in the U.K., if not all of Europe,” said CEO Richard Dinan. “Pulsar is now an international space propulsion testing powerhouse, and we have ambitious plans to expand rapidly.”

The company’s immediate focus is progressing toward in-orbit testing. Components of Sunbird are scheduled for demonstration later this year as Pulsar Fusion pushes forward with its goal of achieving nuclear fusion in space by 2027. The broader vision includes deploying a fleet of heavily shielded spacecraft stationed in orbit to support missions for international partners, potentially enabling routine travel between Earth, Mars, and beyond.

Nuclear fusion offers transformative potential over traditional energy sources such as nuclear fission or fossil fuels. While fission splits heavy radioactive elements like uranium into lighter ones, fusion combines light elements – typically hydrogen – under extreme temperatures and pressures. The result is a process that generates four times more energy than fission and millions of times more than fossil fuels, all while producing no dangerous radioactive waste.

Despite its promise, sustaining fusion reactions on Earth remains difficult due to the immense energy input required.

Dinan argues that space presents a more favorable environment for fusion, thanks to its natural lack of atmospheric interference. “It’s very unnatural to do fusion on Earth,” Dinan told CNN. “Space is a far more logical, sensible place to do fusion because that’s where it wants to happen anyway.”

The Sunbird’s design capitalizes on this advantage by using linear reactors rather than the circular tokamaks commonly employed on Earth. These reactors utilize strong magnetic fields to heat plasma, creating the conditions necessary for fusion using trace amounts of fuel, such as helium-3.

Unlike Earth-based reactors that rely on neutron interactions for heat, Sunbird would produce protons as “nuclear exhaust,” directly propelling the spacecraft. While this method is inefficient and costly for terrestrial energy generation, it is well-suited for space travel, where reducing fuel mass and achieving high speeds are crucial.

Dinan likened Sunbird’s functionality to urban bike-sharing systems: reusable vehicles stationed in orbit that rendezvous with spacecraft mid-journey to replace inefficient chemical engines with fusion-powered alternatives. This concept could dramatically shorten interplanetary missions, enabling trips between Earth and Mars in under six months and journeys to Jupiter or Saturn in just two to four years.

Initial demonstrations will begin with testing circuit boards in orbit later this year, followed by a small-scale linear fusion experiment in 2027 to validate the underlying physics. If successful, full-scale Sunbird vehicles could be operational within five years.

Sunbird’s potential extends beyond interplanetary travel. It could also support asteroid mining missions, cutting round-trip times from three years to as little as one or two.

Other organizations are pursuing similar paths. Helicity Space, for example, has secured an investment from Lockheed Martin to develop its own fusion engine, while NASA and General Atomics are advancing fission-based reactors for potential crewed Mars missions, with tests scheduled for 2027.

Experts outside Pulsar Fusion recognize the transformative potential of fusion propulsion, despite its technical challenges. Aaron Knoll of Imperial College London told CNN that while energy output must exceed input for Earth-based power generation, space propulsion benefits from any net energy since it directly boosts thrust efficiency. However, miniaturizing the reactor and support systems remains a key engineering challenge.

Bhuvana Srinivasan from the University of Washington emphasized the dramatic advantages fusion propulsion could offer, even for lunar missions. With its high thrust and efficiency, it could enable single-trip deployments of entire lunar bases, complete with crew. She also highlighted the possibility of using fusion-powered missions for resource extraction, such as harvesting helium-3 from the Moon – a critical fuel for future fusion reactors.

Unlocking fusion propulsion, she added, would not only extend humanity’s reach into deep space but could also bring wide-ranging benefits. “Exploration of planets, moons, and solar systems farther away is fundamental to our curious and exploratory nature as humans while also potentially leading to substantial financial and societal benefit in ways that we may not yet realize.”