NASA’s push for a new nuclear rocket engine is not just another upgrade to the hardware we strap to the bottom of spacecraft. It is an attempt to rewrite the basic rules of how far, how fast, and how ...

The USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has finalised an agreement with Lockheed Martin to begin work on the fabrication and design of an experimental nuclear thermal rocket and its engine ...

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 ...

Mars has always felt like a distant neighbor, reachable only after a long, risky cruise through deep space. Now engineers inside NASA are sketching a very different future, one where a nuclear powered ...

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 ...

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 ...

Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in a new window) Share on Reddit (opens in a new window) Share on Hacker News (opens in a new window) Share on Flipboard (opens in a new ...

DARPA and NASA were working together on DRACO, a demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion. Credit: NASA Experts from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will hold a media ...

Fundamentals of thermodynamics and aerodynamics -- Thermodynamic cycle analysis of gas turbines and air-breathing propulsion systems -- Aerodynamic design of axial flow compressors and turbines -- ...