NASA Working with US Military on Nuclear-Powered Rocket Engines Written 30 January 2023
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Artist’s concept of the NASA reference design for the Project Orion starship powered by nuclear propulsion. | Credit: Curimedia; Wikipedia; Public Domain
Mashable reported on the announcement, made at the AIAA SciTech Forum, that NASA is partnering with the US military “to test a nuclear-powered rocket engine in space as early as 2027, potentially revolutionizing how people travel the cosmos in the coming decades. The two agencies will work on a nuclear thermal propulsion system, a technology NASA wants to use to send humans to Mars in the late 2030s. But the test mission – known as Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or the DRACO program – would not involve astronauts.”
Full Story (Mashable)