Ad Astra, SpaceNukes Pioneering High-Power Electric Propulsion

HOUSTON—Strategic partners Ad Astra Rocket Co. and Space Nuclear Power Corp. are seeking to advance high-power nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) technologies able to accelerate and increase the reliability of human and robotic missions to Mars and beyond.

The agreement between Ad Astra of Webster, Texas, and Los Alamos, New Mexico-based SpaceNukes is geared toward combining decades of individual research efforts to support an inflight NEP demonstration by the end of this decade and commercialize the technology in the 2030s, according to a Dec. 3 joint announcement.

A goal of the joint effort is to reduce round-trip travel to Mars from well over a year to a fuel-efficient few months, increasing the potential for a sustainable human presence at the red planet.

In 1958, sailing from the north Pacific, the USS Nautilus dove just north of Utqiagvik, Alaska, and surfaced 96 hr. later northeast of Greenland. Nuclear power enabled the voyage under the North Pole, hitherto impossible by a conventional submarine. High-power NEP will enable

‘The Nautilus Paradigm’ to extend into space, opening the entire solar system to human exploration,” said Ad Astra CEO Franklin Chang Diaz, a plasma physicist and retired NASA shuttle astronaut,. “We are proud, through this alliance, to help lay the groundwork for this achievement.”

“Nuclear Electric Propulsion will achieve game-changing performance via stepwise technology evolution,” added SpaceNukes Chief Technology Officer David Poston.

Their joint vision leverages Ad Astra’s 20 years of experience at its Webster test facilities with the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, a propulsion prototype that is able to scale to operations from hundreds of kilowatts to multiple megawatts of power and SpaceNuke’s Kilopower reactor technology. The latter has been developed over the past decade through a joint effort among NASA, the U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling Technology initiative.

That reactor design, development and test program supported the demonstration of a nuclear kilopower fission reactor able to generate 1-10 kW of electricity in space or on planetary surfaces with a capability to evolve to a much greater power system.

SpaceNukes’ efforts have continued under the U.S. Space Force’s  Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-orbit Nuclear Power project, which is focused on the design of high- and low-power space nuclear power-generation options.

The high-power NEP capabilities sought by Ad Astra and SpaceNukes are envisioned as providing a space propulsion capability using an estimated 10-100 times less propellant than current chemical rocket propulsion technologies to open a door to rapid transportation around the solar system.

“NEP enables human-timescale missions to Mars, Jupiter and beyond without propellant depots, bases or sunlight,” according to the joint announcement.