The United States is looking to make history and launch the first nuclear-powered rocket engine into space in as soon as four years.
NASA announced on Wednesday that the agency and the Department of Defense are partnering on a $499 million project called the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, to develop and launch a nuclear-powered rocket engine into space as early as 2027."NASA is looking to go to Mars with this system," Anthony Calomino, the NASA engineer leading the space nuclear propulsion technology program, told ARS Technica.
Lockheed Martin has been selected by NASA to design, build, and test a nuclear propulsion system for DRACO. BWX Technologies, based in Virginia, will build the nuclear fission reactor that sits at the heart of the rocket engine. Projects Rover and NERVA looked to develop nuclear-thermal engines similar to those being designed for DRACO. For those projects, 23 reactors were built but none were ever launched into space. The difference between DRACO and NERVA is the type of uranium used — NERVA used weapons-grade uranium and DRACO will use a less-enriched amount of the element.
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