NASA to test nuclear thermal rocket engine for the first time in 50 years - CNN

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A atomic thermal rocket motor successful improvement could 1 time transport humans to Mars.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a probe limb of the US Department of Defense, and NASA are mounting their sights connected a benignant of rocket motor that could beryllium the beatified grail for rapidly and safely getting humans to the reddish planet. The archetypal tests could hap arsenic soon arsenic 2027, according to a Tuesday news release from the abstraction agency.

“DARPA and NASA person a agelong past of fruitful collaboration successful advancing technologies for our respective goals, from the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon for the archetypal clip to robotic servicing and refueling of satellites,” DARPA manager Dr. Stefanie Tompkins said successful a statement. “The abstraction domain is captious to modern commerce, technological discovery, and nationalist security.”

The US subject and NASA sought to make this benignant of exertion in the mid-20th century, but the programme stalled. Now, the initiative is gaining caller traction successful the modern epoch arsenic the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, oregon DRACO, program.

Research into atomic thermal rocket engines by NASA began successful 1959. A cardinal programme successful the 1960s, called the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application, adjacent sought to show the exertion successful abstraction — but that ne'er came to fruition.

“Funding for NERVA, however, decreased successful the precocious 1960s and the programme was cancelled successful 1973 earlier immoderate formation tests of the motor took place,” according to the abstraction agency’s website.

These days, NASA has renewed involvement successful sending humans to the reddish planet. The abstraction agency’s Artemis program, which had its inaugural uncrewed trial formation to the satellite past year, directs the abstraction bureau to instrumentality humans to the lunar aboveground arsenic a stepping chromatic for yet putting the archetypal humans connected Mars.

“Recent aerospace materials and engineering advancements are enabling a caller epoch for abstraction atomic technology, and this formation objection volition beryllium a large accomplishment toward establishing a abstraction proscription capableness for an Earth-Moon economy,” Jim Reuter, subordinate head for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said successful a statement.

As the sanction implies, a atomic thermal motor would trust connected a atomic reactor, utilizing a process called atomic fission — successful which a neutron slams into an atom to rip it apart, mounting disconnected a almighty concatenation absorption — to vigor up propellant and supply the thrust needed to propel a rocket done space. (The atomic fission process is amended known successful the nationalist consciousness for its relation successful vigor production, and NASA previously signed a woody with the US Department of Energy to probe its applications for abstraction travel.)

That process, according to NASA, is 3 oregon much times much businesslike than the chemic propulsion utilized by the rockets presently successful operation, successful which an explosive substance is mixed with an oxidizer to make a fiery blaze of thrust. The much businesslike atomic process, NASA said, could let spacecraft to traverse the 140 million-mile (225 million-kilometer) mean region betwixt the Earth and Mars acold much rapidly than is imaginable today, greatly reducing the magnitude of clip astronauts are exposed to unsafe levels of radiation connected aboriginal deep-space missions.

Under the statement with DARPA — which is possibly champion known for its relation successful laying the groundwork for the internet — NASA volition pb the technological improvement of the caller engine. DARPA volition plan an experimental spacecraft, arsenic good arsenic pb the wide program, according to the contract.