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takyon writes:

German researchers have tested their own EmDrive design as well as a Mach Effect Thruster, finding that interactions between components and Earth's magnetic field may explain anomalous thrust:

The researchers – Martin Tajmar, Matthias Kößling, Marcel Weikert and Maxime Monette – presented their findings last week at the Aeronautics and Astronautics Association of France's Space Propulsion conference. The title of their paper is "The SpaceDrive Project – First Results on EmDrive and Mach-Effect Thrusters."

[...] The TU Dresden team constructed an EmDrive similar to the NASA test model. They stuck it in a shielded vacuum chamber and bombarded it with microwaves. They were able to measure thrust but it wasn't correlated with the direction the engine was pointing, leading them to conclude the test apparatus itself was affecting the measurements. They found that "magnetic interaction from twisted-pair cables and amplifiers with the Earth's magnetic field can be a significant error source for EMDrives."

The researchers will continue to conduct more tests, and will attempt to better shield the setup from interference, scale up the power, and add a missing dielectric disc component.

Meanwhile, NASA's Harold White has released another paper, Spacedrives and Conservation Laws. At a Breakthrough Discuss conference in April, he revealed plans to scale up to 400 Watts, and got grilled by Lawrence Krauss (video) and Robert Zubrin (same video) about the physics behind the device as well as a presentation slide assuming 400 times greater thrust per kilowatt than what Eagleworks observed, enabling "intersteller [sic] precursor" missions.

Also at Ars Technica, Phys.org, and Space.com.

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