NASA wants to build a prototype nuclear thruster whose promise is to reduce travel time, thanks to a more powerful technology than that used today for rockets.
First, the Moon. And then, March. If the Artemis program seeks to send humans back to our natural satellite, it is also in preparation for an even greater ambition. Manned missions to the Red Planet are on NASA’s agenda. But how ?
Nuclear propulsion, different from the chemical propulsion used today for rockets, could be an interesting technological solution for travel. Studied for several decades, it would have the advantage of bringing greater speed to transport vehicles. Still in 2019, the head of NASA declared that this could be the key to space exploration, reducing a trip to Mars to 3-4 months instead of 5-8 months with current technologies.
In its 2023 program listing new concepts to be developed, NASA has selected a nuclear thruster project. This would not only reduce the trip to 3-4 months (about a hundred days), but to 45 days. It’s very ambitious.
Lowering travel time reduces risk
The advantage of this concept is to be “bimodal”. This means that it combines two methods of nuclear propulsion:
- NTP (Nuclear Thermal Propulsion) : gas — hydrogen or ammonia — is heated from nuclear fission, until it becomes ionized gas, ie plasma, which, transferred to turbines, causes a propulsion movement;
- CIP (Nuclear-Electric Propulsion): here, the nuclear reactor supplies electricity to a Hall effect thruster (an electromagnetic field that ionizes and accelerates inert gas (xenon type) until it causes thrust)
Both models have their advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of a bimodal system is to combine its qualities, a priori without the defects of each. The project selected by NASA adds a pressure wave compressor. According to Ryan Gosse, the head of this concept, this could more than double the total propulsion power compared to what is done today.
And the duration of the trip is not a detail. Manned missions to Mars will be dangerous for many reasons. Among them, the time of exposure to radiation. Reducing the travel time means reducing the time of the mission, as well as the associated risks.
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