5/5/2023 0 Comments Nuclear time mars![]() ![]() Space nuclear propulsion systems could enable shorter total mission times and provide enhanced flexibility and efficiency for mission designers. NASA’s goal is to minimize the time the crew travels between Earth and Mars to as close to two years as is practical. Waiting for optimal planetary alignment for the return trip would require astronauts to loiter at Mars for more than a year, stretching the round-trip mission to more than three years. To date, only robotic explorers have traveled to Mars, without the need for returning to Earth. “We look forward to seeing what innovations industry offer in nuclear propulsion as well as fission surface power via a forthcoming request for proposals for that technology." “While NASA’s immediate priority is returning humans to the Moon with the Artemis program, we are also investing in ‘tall pole’ technologies that could enable crewed missions to Mars,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). Future follow-on contracts will generate more detailed reactor designs and build preliminary testing hardware. The agencies plan to fund several efforts to explore different approaches. NASA, in coordination with the Department of Energy (DOE), is asking industry for preliminary reactor design concepts for a nuclear thermal propulsion system. That heat converts the liquid into a gas, which expands through a nozzle to provide thrust and propel a spacecraft. The system works by transferring heat from the reactor to a liquid propellant. Nuclear thermal propulsion technology provides high thrust and twice the propellant efficiency of chemical rockets. Using low thrust efficiently, nuclear electric propulsion systems accelerate spacecraft for extended periods and can propel a Mars mission for a fraction of the propellant of high thrust systems. They use a reactor to generate electricity that positively charges gas propellants like xenon or krypton, pushing the ions out through a thruster, which drives the spacecraft forward. Nuclear electric propulsion systems use propellants much more efficiently than chemical rockets but provide a low amount of thrust. NASA is looking at two types of nuclear propulsion systems – nuclear electric and nuclear thermal propulsion. As NASA’s Perseverance rover homes in on the Red Planet, engineers on the ground are furthering potential propulsion technologies for the first human missions to Mars.
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