When it comes to space travel, fission power makes a lot of sense. Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) engines are more efficient, can shorten travel times, and can carry bigger payloads. And Lockheed Martin is already hard at work designing an NTP engine for cislunar operations for DARPA’s DRACO program.
But fission can do much more than simple propulsion, and that’s why the U.S. military is forking over $33.7 million for Lockheed Martin—along with Space Nuclear Power Corp (SpaceNukes) and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT)—to start designing a nuclear spacecraft as part of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) project.
This technology demonstrator will use nuclear fission to power Stirling engines that produce between 6 kWe and 20 kWe of electricity—Lockheed Martin claims that this provides four times the power of conventional solar arrays without the need for constant sunlight. This technique comes directly from lessons learned with NASA’s Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment, which investigated how to provide electricity via nuclear power for future outposts on the Moon and, eventually, Mars.
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