NASA's plan for nuking Gateway and sending it to Mars
9 hours ago
- #NASA
- #Moon exploration
- #Nuclear propulsion
- NASA pauses work on lunar space station (Gateway) to focus on a Moon surface base.
- Approximately $4.5 billion spent on Gateway development since 2019, with some components already built.
- Power and Propulsion Element (Gateway's core module) may be repurposed for a nuclear-electric propulsion demo.
- NASA previously worked on nuclear propulsion projects like Project Prometheus (canceled) and DRACO (canceled in 2023).
- Nuclear power in space enables missions in deep Solar System and lunar bases during the long lunar night.
- Nuclear-powered rockets: nuclear-thermal (higher thrust) and nuclear-electric (greater efficiency). DRACO used nuclear-thermal; new mission will use nuclear-electric.