NASA has selected three teams of companies to perform concept studies of
nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) reactors while making plans to fund similar
studies for nuclear surface power systems.
Jim Reuter, NASA associate administrator for space technology, announced the
awards in a presentation at the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn
Memorial Symposium July 13. Each contract is worth approximately $5 million
and will last one year.
One contract will go to BWX Technologies, working with Lockheed Martin. A
second contract will go to General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, working
with X-energy and Aerojet Rocketdyne. The third will go to Ultra Safe
Nuclear Technologies, working with its parent company, Ultra Safe Nuclear
Corporation, as well as Blue Origin, General Electric Hitachi Nuclear
Energy, General Electric Research, Framatome and Materion.
All three studies are focused on developing a design for a reactor that
would be part of a future NTP system. That reactor would heat up a
propellant such as liquid hydrogen, generating thrust at far higher
efficiencies than conventional propulsion systems and enabling shorter
transit times for missions to Mars.
Under the study contracts, each team will mature their reactor designs to
“30% fidelity” of the final design, demonstrating that it is feasible and
estimating the cost and schedule to build a prototype reactor. They will
also develop fundamental operating and performance requirements for the
overall NTP engine and its subsystems.
NASA is working with the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory on
the contracts, and that lab will conduct design reviews of each team’s
reactor concepts at the end of the study period.
The potential benefits of reduced travel time for Mars missions have
elevated interest in both NTP and nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) after an
extended period of little work on those technologies. A study in February by
a National Academies committee recommended NASA accelerate its work on those
technologies so they can be available for human missions to Mars by the late
2030s.
Reuter, speaking at a Space Transportation Association webinar in June, said
that study’s conclusions didn’t surprise the agency. “You need a lot of
technology development on both of them,” he said of both NTP and NEP. “That
has caused us to step back a little bit and see how can put together a total
road map that can address both technologies as we go forward.”
NASA is not the only agency pursuing NTP technologies. DARPA’s Demonstration
Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program is supporting initial
studies of NTP systems that would be used for rapid maneuvering in cislunar
space. In April, DARPA awarded General Atomics a $22 million contract for
reactor design work, while Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin won contracts to
develop spacecraft contracts using NTP systems for the DRACO program.
Reuter said at the Glenn Symposium that NASA is cooperating with DARPA on
their respective NTP programs. “We’re very well integrated,” he said. “Our
intent is to work even more closely as we go forward, and we see lots of
ways that we can jointly go forward.”
Congress has pushed NASA to develop NTP systems by setting side funding in
appropriations bills for technology development, even when NASA has not
requested it. That includes a fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill a House
subcommittee advanced July 12, which provides $110 million for NTP work.
That funding has sometimes put work on nuclear propulsion in conflict with
NASA’s interest in surface fission power systems, which the agency
anticipates needing before NTP in order to support Artemis missions on the
surface of the moon. A reactor can provide power during the extended lunar
night, when solar power is unavailable.
Reuter said that, with the NTP study contracts awarded, the agency will move
ahead with similar work on nuclear surface power. “A forthcoming request for
proposals will ask similar things from industry: preliminary designs of a
10-kilowatt-class system for fission surface power that we could demonstrate
on the lunar surface,” he said. He did not give a more specific schedule for
that call for proposals.