Making Daily Headlines · Page 4
NASA Gives the Long Road to Mars a Nuclear Power Plan
· New York time
NASA reports progress on the nuclear power module for Space Reactor-1 Freedom, a mission intended to demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion in deep space. The project is destined for Mars and beyond and is planned as the first fission-powered spacecraft to travel outside Earth's orbit. That makes the power module more than an accessory. A propulsion demonstration depends on the system that supplies its energy, which is a useful corrective to the popular view that space travel mostly involves a dramatic countdown and a confident patch. The stakes are technological: demonstrating a different way to power travel far from Earth. Progress on a module is a development milestone, not the same thing as a completed mission or an arrival at Mars. Space exploration routinely asks the public to imagine extraordinary destinations while engineers work through specific hardware problems. The destination gets the poster. The power system gets the responsibility of making the poster less aspirational. The comic contrast is almost unfair. On Earth, a trip can be delayed because someone forgot a charging cable. NASA is working on a spacecraft whose energy planning involves fission. Both cases reward preparation, but only one is likely to fit in the glove compartment beside a gas receipt.
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