NASA's nuclear propulsion systems are moving along

This could be the future of interplanetary travel!

SpaceNews reports that: “NASA is working on a streamlined management approach for a nuclear electric propulsion demonstration mission the agency wants to launch in two and a half years.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called nuclear propulsion “the next ‘giant leap’ technology” just last month, and recently, Axios reports that “a new partnership between the University of Alabama in Huntsville and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is advancing the propulsion technology.”

NASA’s hoping to prepare this technology for the Space Reactor 1 (SR-1) Freedom launch, which would be the “first flight demonstration of nuclear electric propulsion, with a nuclear reactor providing power to electric thrusters to send the spacecraft to Mars.”

Of course, nuclear propulsion is not a novel concept, but shifting priorities in the space agenda have made it so that the focus has been less on deep-space travel and more on local orbiting maneuvers, for which nuclear propulsion is not necessary for!

In this case, the nuclear propulsion does not reference radioisotope generators (RTGs), but rather fission reactors. RTGs produce power by using the heat released by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, but often feature extremely limited quantities and therefore do not provide the propulsive thrust needed for a manned mission to Mars.

Importantly, though, “the agency has not disclosed a cost estimate for SR-1 Freedom, and the mission was not included in NASA’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, released a week and a half after Ignition”, which was the event that announced this new spacecraft!

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NASA Photo of the Day 🌔

Explanation: What do you see in this crystal ball? The featured image shows NGC 1514, known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, observed by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, in Hawai’i. NGC 1514 is 1,500 light-years away and was discovered by William Herschel in 1790. This planetary nebula is formed when a star becomes a red giant and ejects its outer gas layers. The ejected shell of gas is heated up by the core of the star to temperatures hotter than the surface of our Sun: that makes the gas shine, creating beautiful images like this one. The slightly asymmetrical shape of the Crystal Ball Nebula reveals a secret: the bright star in the center has a companion. As the two stars orbit each other with a period of about nine years, they shape the gas around them. In about 10,000 - 25,000 years the nebula will be dissipated by their stellar winds.

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Daily Opportunity Drop 🌌

Check out openings at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: https://www.jpl.jobs/

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