Washington: NASA has successfully demonstrated a new nuclear reactor power system that could enable long-duration crewed missions to the Moon, Mars and destinations beyond.
The Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology experiment was conducted at US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)’s Nevada National Security Site from November 2017 through March, NASA said.
“Safe, efficient and plentiful energy will be the key to future robotic and human exploration, said Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington.
Kilopower is a small, lightweight fission power system capable of providing up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power — enough to run several average households — continuously for at least 10 years.
Four Kilopower units would provide enough power to establish an outpost, the US space agency said. The pioneering power system is ideal for the Moon, where power generation from sunlight is difficult because lunar nights are equivalent to 14 days on Earth, said Marc Gibson, lead Kilopower engineer at Glenn Research Centre.
“Kilopower gives us the ability to do much higher power missions, and to explore the shadowed craters of the Moon, said Gibson. “When we start sending astronauts for long stays on the Moon and to other planets, that is going to require a new class of power we never needed before,” he said.
The prototype power system uses a solid, cast uranium-235 reactor core, about the size of a paper towel roll. Passive sodium heat pipes transfer reactor heat to high-efficiency Stirling engines, which convert the heat to electricity. According to David Poston, the chief reactor designer at NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the purpose of the recent experiment in Nevada was to demonstrate that it can create electricity with fission power, and to show the system is stable.
