The fuel was subjected to full reactor heat and hydrogen gas and kept there for 20 minutes – about what a nuclear engine would have to endure during a boost maneuver. Other tests looked at how the ...

Space rockets may soon use nuclear-powered engines based on nuclear thermal propulsion, or NTP technology. While no nuclear engine will fly this year, the field is approaching a major milestone, with ...

The coming decades of space exploration hinge on a single, stubborn number: the 225 million kilometres between Earth and Mars. Chemical rockets, the workhorses of every space programme to date, take ...

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) is the preferred propulsion technology for manned missions throughout the solar system. The state-of-the-art NTP cycle is based on solid core Nuclear Engine for Rocket ...

Jim Bickford is leading the Thin Film Isotope Nuclear Engine Rocket (TFINER) project to develop a system for propelling a craft through space faster and farther than ever before. This technology has ...

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Tuesday a collaboration to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, an enabling capability for NASA crewed ...

Phoebus 2A, the most powerful space nuclear reactor ever made, was fired up at Nevada Test Site on June 26, 1968. The test lasted 750 seconds and confirmed it could carry first humans to Mars. But ...

Humanity has lived in the space age for decades, but virtually every probe, rocket, and satellite shaping this era has relied on chemical propulsion. As scientists and engineers eye more distant ...

It seems too good to be true, but UK-based Pulsar Fusion has revealed its new Sunbird self-contained nuclear rocket tug that uses a fusion propulsion engine that could reduce a trip to Mars to under ...