NASA’s push for a new nuclear rocket engine is not just another upgrade to the hardware we strap to the bottom of spacecraft.

BWX Technologies has been awarded contracts totaling approximately $2.1 billion from the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. This substantial investment aims to manufacture reactor components for ...

Space agencies are moving closer to a new era of rocket propulsion that could fundamentally change deep-space travel. Nuclear ...

Two United States based firms have entered into a partnership to advance high-power nuclear electric propulsion technology for faster space travel. Ad Astra Rocket Company (Ad Astra) and The Space ...

NASA is leading an effort, working with the Department of Energy (DOE), to advance space nuclear technologies. The government team has selected three reactor design concept proposals for a nuclear ...

NASA is backing a new generation of nuclear rockets that could compress the months-long journey to Mars into a sprint ...

Current chemical propulsion systems necessitate prolonged transit times for crewed Mars missions, driving the exploration of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) as a more efficient alternative to ...

This relatively long transit time is a result of the use of traditional chemical rocket fuel. An alternative technology to the chemically propelled rockets the agency develops now is called nuclear ...

General Atomics and NASA have successfully tested a new type of nuclear thermal propulsion reactor fuel at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The new fuel could help power propulsion ...

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster thriller Oppenheimer has rekindled public interest in everything nuclear, including nuclear thermal propulsion in space, a promising yet unproven technology that could ...

This satellite image shows the Nuclear Power Institute of China’s Site No. 1, also known as Base 909, in Mucheng Township, Sichuan Province, China, on July 5, 2023. (Planet Labs PBC) BANGKOK — China ...

The European Space Agency (ESA) is funding several studies that will explore the use of nuclear propulsion for deep space exploration. Propulsion in space currently is conducted using a storage ...