SPACE reports, “NASA is one step closer to sending a drone mission to another world. Technicians at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland have begun building and testing the nuclear-powered Dragonfly rotorcraft, which will launch toward the huge Saturn moon Titan in 2028.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Tag: Nuclear-Powered
Lockheed Martin Contracted by NASA to Design, Test New Nuclear-Powered Propulsion System
The New York Times reports NASA and DARPA have announced that Lockheed Martin has been selected “to design, build and test a propulsion system that could one day speed astronauts on a trip to Mars.” The nearly $500 million program “is named DRACO, short for the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations.” The DRACO development “is to culminate with a flight test of the nuclear-thermal engine.” Kirk Shireman, a vice president at Lockheed Martin, “said the launch was currently scheduled for late 2025 or early 2026.”
Full Story (The New York Times)
NASA Working with US Military on Nuclear-Powered Rocket Engines
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)