The European Space Agency has an illustration of a permanent lunar base.
Do you or a friend know how to build a nuclear reactor that can fit inside a rocket? Can you finish the job by the end of the decade? NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy would like to hear from you if that is the case.
The Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory is working with NASA to put a high-power, sun-independent reactor on the moon within the next 10 years. The two agencies are looking for proposals from partners to start the project, with a submission deadline of February 19, 2022.
The reactor would help turn the moon into an extraterrestrial base for human space exploration, including future manned missions to Mars, agency officials said.
Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., saidtiful energy will be key to future space exploration. I expect the use of surface power systems to benefit our plans for power architectures for the moon and Mars.
Basic guidelines are included in the call for proposals. The reactor must be a reactor that splits heavy atomic nuclei into lighter ones, releasing energy as a byproduct. Nuclear fusion involves combining two or more lighter atoms into one heavier one, releasing energy in the process.
The reactor must fit into a rocket with dimensions listed above and weigh no more than 13,200 pounds. 40 kilowatts of continuous electric power will be provided for 10 years by the reactor on the moon. The device must be kept cool with temperature controls. According to Live Science, the temperature on the moon can reach more than 260 degrees Fahrenheit, or 127 degrees Celsius, during the day.
NASA is ramping up its Artemis program, which aims to create a sustainable human presence on the moon by the end of the decade. The program is estimated to cost around $93 billion and will return humans to the moon.
Live Science published the original article.
