The Defense Innovation Unit is furthering their work in nuclear power.
The organization, which seeks to get the military ready to use emergent commercial products, announced two prototype contracts on May 17 to demonstrate the next generation of nuclear propulsion and power capability for spacecraft.
Two companies, Ultra Safe Nuclear and Avalanche Energy, were awarded contracts to demonstrate nuclear power for small spaceships that would operate in lunacisr space. The values of the contracts were not disclosed.
The U.S. military is focused on keeping an eye on commercial and government activities that will ramp up there in the coming decades, including the international NASA-led Artemis program that seeks to put people on the moon.
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Ultra Safe Nuclear will demonstrate a nuclear radioisotope battery called EmberCore.
The next-gen radioisotope system will be able to scale to 10 times higher power levels, compared to plutonium systems, and provide more than 1 million kilowatt hours of energy in just a few kilograms of fuel.
A magnetron is needed to keep the electrons closer to their nucleus than what is usually possible.
The fusion burn produces energetic particles that generate either heat or electricity, which can power a high-efficiency propulsion system.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for cislunar nuclear technology. On May 4, the organization announced that it is ready to move forward on a project to design, develop and assemble a nuclear thermal rocket engine for an expected flight demonstration in Earth orbit by 2026.
The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program aims to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion system for use in Earth-moon space.
The thrust-to-weight ratio is 10,000 times higher with NTP's method of shooting hydrogen or other propellants out of nozzles. According to a description of the DRACO program in the new tab, chemical rockets have a specific impulse that is about two to five times higher than NTPs.
NASA is looking at NTPs as well. Current systems take six to nine months to bring astronauts to Mars. NASA is collaborating in the DRACO project and has a budget request that includes 15 million dollars to support nuclear propulsion.
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