NASA is going to test nuclear propulsion in space to travel faster to Mars

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 13:57

NASA wants to send a nuclear-powered rocket into space within five years. In this way, it should be possible in the future to allow people to travel to Mars faster than is currently possible with the current rocket technology, which mainly uses liquid fuel engines.

For the nuclear rocket propulsion, the space agency will collaborate with the American military research group DARPA, which has been working for some time on an engine based on nuclear fission. “This new technology will allow astronauts to travel to distant locations in space faster than ever before, an important capability in preparation for manned missions to Mars,” said NASA Director Bill Nelson, announcing the intention at a conference in Maryland.

Conventional liquid fuel rocket engines – often hydrogen – operate for a limited time, until the fuel runs out. Nuclear-powered rocket engines can last longer with the same amount of fuel, giving the spacecraft more speed.

In such a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR), liquid hydrogen is heated in a small nuclear reactor and expelled as a gas under high pressure, creating thrust. That process is about twice as efficient in terms of fuel consumption as that of a traditional rocket engine.

Earlier experiment

Nuclear propulsion was already being experimented with in the 1960s with the NERVA project. An NTR engine was successfully tested several times in test installations on Earth. NASA made plans for a NERVA-powered mission to Mars, but budget cuts ended the program in 1973.

NASA is now planning to send humans to Mars again. The Artemis lunar program is intended as a “stepping stone” to the red planet. According to space engineers, nuclear propulsion can considerably shorten the journey: from nine months to four.

However, the use of radioactive processes in space is not without controversy. Over the years, environmentalists have repeatedly protested against planetary explorers using radioactive material to generate energy.

For the new project, NASA is joining the military institute DARPA, which has been working since 2022 on a new NTR drive under the name DRACO. The plan is for the nuclear-powered rocket to make its first space flight by 2027 at the latest. $110 million has been earmarked for development this year, but hundreds of millions more are expected to be needed by 2027.

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