NASA, Pentagon partner on Mars project

Groups aim to send astronauts to planet with nuclear propulsion technology

With Mars being the next target for space missions, having the right technology ready is key. Using the technology NASA has, it could take some seven months to get to the red planet, which is why it is partnering with a Pentagon agency on development of nuclear propulsion technology.

Developments would be key in ensuring the safety of any and all mission participants. The radiation levels on a Mars mission could expose astronauts to radiation levels more than 100 times greater than on Earth.

If NASA’s going to get to Mars, it needs to find a way to get there much faster. Which is one of the reasons it said last week that it is partnering with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on development of nuclear propulsion technology.

“With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever — a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The goal, he said, is “to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027.”

DARPA, the arm of the Defense Department that seeks to develop transformative technologies, has been working on the program since 2021, when it awarded three contracts for the first phase of the program to General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. A nuclear-powered rocket would use a nuclear reactor to heat propellant to extreme temperatures before shooting the fuel through a nozzle to produce thrust.

Being able to move fast “is a core tenet of modern Department of Defense operations on land, at sea and in the air,” DARPA said in a statement at the time. “However, rapid maneuver in the space domain has traditionally been challenging because current electric and chemical space propulsion systems have drawbacks in thrusttoweight and propellant efficiency.” In other words, traditional systems require too much fuel that burns at relatively inefficient levels.

The program is called DRACO, for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar (or in the vicinity of the moon) Operations.

Under NASA’s agreement with DARPA, the space agency will lead the development of the nuclear thermal engine while DARPA will work to develop the experimental spacecraft that would be propelled by the nuclear engine. The agencies hope they’ll be ready to demonstrate their work with a spaceflight in 2027.

NASA is also working with the Department of Energy on a separate project to develop a nuclear power plant that could be used on the moon and perhaps one day on Mars.

But getting to Mars is exceedingly difficult, and despite claims from NASA for years that it was gearing up to send astronauts there, the agency is nowhere close to achieving that goal.

One of the main obstacles is the distance. Earth and Mars are only on the same side of the sun every 26 months. But even at their closest points, a spacecraft would have to follow an elliptical orbit around the sun that, as Tory Bruno, the CEO of the United Launch Alliance, wrote in a recent essay, will require “a great sweeping arc of around 300 million miles to arrive.”

The path to Mars, he wrote, would require a far more efficient propulsion system with speeds that double Orion’s recent velocity. Nuclear power could provide that.

“Clearly, the faster we can complete the journey to Mars the better,” he wrote. “This means developing a much more efficient propulsion technology that could cut transit time by at least 50%, making the trip safer, and leaving more mass available for experiments and research gear.”