Fusion energy is often touted as the ultimate energy source due to its near-unlimited fuel supply and lack of long-term radioactive waste. However, controlled fusion that produces more energy than is put into the reaction is notoriously hard to achieve due to the complications involved with trying to confine high-temperature and high-density plasmas. Inspired by the dipole plasma observed around Jupiter, a joint MIT-Columbia experiment was born in the early 2000’s to test a concept known as the levitated dipole reactor (LDR). The LDR boasts a wide range of plasma performance improvements over the conventional approaches to fusion and could well be a commercially relevant fusion concept that is achievable with current technology.