This text originally appeared on Universe Today.
Getting to Mars takes a extremely very long time, about 9 months utilizing immediately’s rocket technology. It is because common rocket engines burn gasoline and oxygen collectively (like a automobile engine), however they’re not very environment friendly. The elemental drawback is that spacecraft should carry each gasoline and oxidizer since there’s no air in house to help combustion. This creates a vicious circle: The extra gasoline you carry to go sooner, the heavier your spacecraft turns into, requiring much more gasoline to speed up that additional weight. To go sooner, you’d want huge quantities of gasoline, making the rockets extremely costly and heavy. Present chemical propulsion methods are nearly at their theoretical limits, with little room for enchancment in effectivity.
While NASA funding has been slashed by the Trump administration with no allocation for nuclear thermal propulsion and/or nuclear electric propulsion, scientists on the European Space Agency (ESA) have been learning nuclear propulsion. Right here’s the way it works: As a substitute of burning gasoline with oxygen, a nuclear reactor heats up a propellant like hydrogen. The super-heated propellant then shoots out of the rocket nozzle, pushing the spacecraft ahead. This technique is rather more environment friendly than chemical rockets.
Revisiting Nuclear Rockets for Mars
Nuclear rockets provide a number of key benefits, similar to chopping Mars journey instances in half—from 9 months to about 4 to five months. The effectivity positive factors come from the truth that nuclear reactors produce way more power per unit of gasoline than chemical reactions. Surprisingly, astronauts would really obtain much less dangerous radiation on shorter journeys, despite the fact that the engine itself produces radiation. This occurs as a result of house vacationers are continually bombarded by cosmic radiation throughout their journey, and chopping journey time in half considerably reduces their whole publicity. These engines work greatest for large spacecraft that want to hurry up and decelerate dramatically, excellent for Moon and Mars missions the place speedy velocity adjustments of at the least 25,000 km/h are required.
The examine, known as “Alumni,” prioritized security via cautious design. The nuclear reactor solely activates when the spacecraft is much from Earth in a secure orbit. Earlier than activation, the uranium gasoline has very low radioactivity and isn’t poisonous. A number of radiation shields defend the crew in the course of the quick engine burns that final lower than 2 hours. The reactor is designed by no means to return to Earth’s environment. The analysis crew spent over a 12 months analyzing this expertise and concluded it’s possible for long-term improvement. Nonetheless, there’s nonetheless important work forward, together with laboratory testing of the brand new ceramic-metal reactor design, constructing secure testing services, and fixing technical challenges like gasoline sourcing and reactor restart methods.
Nuclear thermal propulsion may revolutionize house journey, making missions to Mars and the Moon sooner and extra sensible. Whereas the expertise is promising and seems secure, it should take a few years of improvement earlier than we see nuclear-powered spacecraft heading to the Pink Planet. It’s nice to see Europe demonstrating that it has the experience to develop this expertise, probably ushering in a brand new period of space exploration the place distant worlds change into extra accessible than ever earlier than
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