The United States plans to test a spacecraft engine powered by nuclear fission by 2027 as part of NASA’s long-term effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of propelling astronauts to Mars in the future, the space agency’s chief said Tuesday.
NASA will partner with the U.S. military’s research and development agency DARPA to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion engine and launch it into space “as soon as 2027,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a conference at National Harbor. Maryland.
The US space agency has studied for decades the concept of nuclear thermal propulsion, which injects heat from a nuclear fission reactor into hydrogen fuel to provide thrust that is believed to be far more efficient than traditional chemical-based rocket engines .
NASA officials believe nuclear thermal propulsion is critical to sending humans beyond the moon and deeper into space. A trip to Mars from Earth using the technology could take roughly four months instead of about nine months with a conventional, chemically powered engine, engineers say.
This would greatly reduce the amount of time astronauts would be exposed to radiation in deep space and would also require fewer supplies, such as food and other cargo, during a trip to Mars.
“If we have faster trips for people, they’re safer trips,” NASA Deputy Administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy said Tuesday.
The planned 2027 demonstration, part of an existing DARPA research program that NASA is now joining, could also inform the US space force’s ambitions to deploy nuclear-powered spacecraft capable of moving other satellites into orbit near the moon, DARPA and NASA officials said.
In 2021, DARPA awarded funds to General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin to research nuclear reactor and spacecraft designs. Around March, the agency will select a company to build the nuclear-powered spacecraft for the 2027 demonstration, program manager Tabitha Dodson said in an interview.
The budget for the joint NASA-DARPA effort is $110 million for fiscal year 2023 and is expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars more through 2027.
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