Engineers say a nuclear thermal rocket could cut astronauts' travel time to Mars from nine months to two. Credit: NASA NASA and the U.S. military plan to test a nuclear-powered rocket engine in space as early as 2027, potentially revolutionizing how people travel the cosmos in the ...
NASA and DARPA announced they awarded Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to build and develop a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engine. Lockheed Martin and BWX technologies under DARPA’s DRACO (the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations) program and in partnership with NASA will build t...
NASA's involvement shouldn't be surprising; the agency's interest in NTP tech goes way back. For example, NASA aimed to launch a crewed Mars mission aboard a nuclear-powered spacecraft by 1979, via aprogram called NERVA("Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application"). This didn't happen,...
A fictional spacecraft approaches the Moon. Image source: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle) While we have yet to complete a nuclear fusion reactor on Earth itself, the effects offered by this process could reach space much sooner. The new rocket engine is being develop...
NASA and SNPO felt that the test "confirmed that anuclear rocket enginewas suitable for space flight application and was able to operate at a specific impulse twice that of chemical rocket system." NASA和SNPO认为“测试表明核动力火箭适合太空飞行任务,而且比冲量是传统化学火箭的两倍。
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). Topics discussed include cutting of transit times to Mars, the NASA's Nerva program of 1960s and the begning of Project Rover by the U.S. Atomic Engine Authority to evaluate first nuclear engines....
That notion was thankfully and swiftly abandoned, but in the 1960s and 1970s, NASA and the US Atomic Energy Commission ran the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) programme, which aimed to use the heat from a fission reaction to propel a rocket into space. Although a ...
Frosty Sand Dunes Could Prove Mars Supported Life NASA Might Have Accidentally Killed Life on Mars The Moon Is Hiding Molten Goo in Its Deep Mantle A Wobble in Mars’ Orbit Could Detect Dark Matter The Earth Is Getting a New Mini-Moon ...
Illustration of a nuclear thermal rocket. Such rockets could be a major part of manned missions to other planets in the solar system. (Image credit: NASA) A new online petition seeks to send people into space sooner, using a Kennedy-era technology that never had the chance to take flight...
NASA design for a Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA). Image Credit: NASA A second possible method, known as Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), involves the same basic reactor converting its heat and energy into electrical energy which then powers an electrical engine. In both ...