Three companies to design space nuclear propulsion systems for orbiting satellites and space missions
ARLINGTON, Va. – The Pentagon’s research and development arm this week awarded a trio of companies with contracts to build and demonstrate a nuclear-powered propulsion system on a spacecraft in orbit by 2025. CNBC reports Continue reading original article
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
15 April 2021 -- General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Jeff Bezos’s space venture Blue Origin won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA awards, under the agency’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program, or DRACO.
The goal of the program is to use a nuclear thermal propulsion system to power a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit. DARPA officials say a nuclear-powered spacecraft could achieve the high power of chemical propulsion system and the high efficiency of electric power.
The contracts awarded to the companies are for the first 18-month phase of the program, with two tracks. In Track A, General Atomics will design a nuclear thermal reactor and propulsion subsystem concept. In Track B, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin will develop spacecraft concept designs.
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John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics
