The Sunbird Migratory Transfer Vehicle, a nuclear fusion rocket concept by Pulsar Fusion, is designed to revolutionize the way humans travel to space, cutting in half the time it takes to get from Earth to Mars.
Over the past decade, Pulsar Fusion worked to design the rocket in secret. It was publicly unveiled at the Space-Comm Expo on March 11 and has continued to make waves since.
This week the company released a fresh video, an amination that shows the concept operating in space. The video features the planned rocket in action, leaving a dock and joining with a much larger spacecraft to propel the craft's journey forward at speed.
Sunbird uses nuclear fusion technology for power. The International Atomic Energy Agency defines nuclear fusion as "the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy."
Pulsar Fusion's nuclear fusion propulsion system was developed completely in-house by a team of scientists.
The company commissioned two of the largest propulsion testing chambers in the U.K. to test the technology, and it plans to expand rapidly, the company's CEO said earlier this year, emphasizing the concept's scalability.
"Nuclear fusion is the pinnacle of space propulsion technology. These reactors are uniquely suited to operate in orbit, where there's no atmosphere. In many ways, it's actually more practical to use fusion for in-space propulsion than it is for energy generation on Earth," Richard Dinan, CEO of Pulsar Fusion, told Newsweek.
"That said, we must pursue fusion for both energy and propulsion, and I believe humanity will ultimately succeed in both. The recent acceleration in AI capabilities have mega implications for fusion. Machine learning models help us manage ultra-hot plasmas with far greater precision, enabling reactors to become smaller, more intelligent and vastly more practical. This is an incredibly exciting time to be working in fusion," he said.
Pulsar Fusion was started as Applied Fusion Systems in 2013. In 2023, the U.K. Space Agency funded its work on integrated nuclear fission power systems for electric propulsion, developed in collaboration with numerous institutions, including the University of Cambridge.
Pulsar isn't the only player in the space. In 2019 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced it was studying fusion-driven rockets (FDR), something it called "a revolutionary approach to fusion propulsion," and noting that "it is believed that the FDR can be realized with little extrapolation from currently existing technology, at high specific power, at a reasonable mass scale and therefore cost."
Newsweek contacted NASA for an update on its research but did not hear back from the organization by the deadline.
Earth's nuclear reactors currently operate using fission. Pulsar's Sunbird uses a different fusion formula than fusion being studied for use in power plants. Large-scale nuclear fusion is thought to be a promising clean energy solution, but scientists believe that the practicality of its use on the planet is limited.