A rocket sent to Mars using nuclear fission. This is the project unveiled by NASA and the Pentagon on Tuesday January 24, aimed at developing a thermal nuclear propulsion rocket to send a manned spacecraft to the red planet. Sixty years ago, NASA had already carried out a space research program based on nuclear energy, without however managing to concretize it.
Creation of the “Nerva” program
The beginnings of nuclear propulsion research in the United States date back to 1955. The American Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) then developed a research program called “Rover”, intended to use nuclear propulsion to send ballistic missiles. In the context of the space rivalry between the United States and the USSR, after the successful launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, the newly created NASA was associated with the project from 1959, to apply this technology to space propulsion.
The “Nerva” program was thus created in 1961, dedicated to research on thermal nuclear propulsion for spacecraft. Concretely, this technology is based on the very high temperatures produced by a nuclear fission reactor. This heat is transferred to liquid fuel, turned into gas and – as in a conventional rocket – this is expelled through a nozzle to provide thrust. This technology would significantly reduce travel time between Earth and the Moon or Mars.
Budget reduction
Nerva’s objective is to develop a rocket engine embedding a nuclear reactor. During the 1960s, NASA and the AEC developed several engine prototypes, to eventually allow manned missions to be sent to the Moon or Mars. The rivalry with the Soviet Union increased after the successful launch of Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1962. Between 1959 and 1969, around twenty tests were carried out at the “Jackass Flats” nuclear test site in the Nevada, to develop the Nerva engine.
Planned to be integrated into the last stage of the Saturn rocket, within the framework of the Apollo program, the Nerva engine was finally abandoned in January 1973, when the American Congress drastically reduced the budget allocated to NASA, after the failure of other missions. . The cost of the Nerva project at the end of the decade of research is estimated at 1.4 billion dollars.