EM Drive is reportedly still producing thrust after another round of NASA testing

[AURaptor 1,121]

There's been a whole lot of hype, controversy, and debate the past few months about the EM Drive – an "impossible" engine that, if functional, could supposedly power a spacecraft to Mars in just 10 weeks, without any rocket fuel.

It's pretty easy to understand the appeal. Science can't explain how the engine could possibly work and yet, somehow, throughout a range of tests at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratory, the engine reportedly continues to produce thrust. But here's the catch – so far none of these results have been peer-reviewed, and it can't be ruled out that the thrust isn't the result of some type of experimental error. So for now, we remain skeptical.

But in the meantime, Paul Mach, one of the principal investigators at the Eagleworks Lab, has provided the first public update about their tests on the EM Drive in months, and has admitted that the team has upgraded their experimental protocol and mitigated some of the errors that people were concerned about in prior tests.

"And yet the anomalous thrust signals remain..." Mach wrote on the NASASpaceFlight forums.

His comment was in response to an unpublished paper, which claimed that the propulsion seen in earlier trials of the EM Drive were a result of Lorentz force – which means the force generated by interactions between the EM Drive and the Earth's magnetic field.

Mach explains that he can't comment on this work in detail or provide any photos, as his lab is in the process of getting a peer-reviewed paper published, but that he can shed some light on the issue.

Perhaps they could name the engine " Clara " , from Dr. Who,