NASA’s push for a new nuclear rocket engine is not just another upgrade to the hardware we strap to the bottom of spacecraft. It is an attempt to rewrite the basic rules of how far, how fast, and how ...

The USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has finalised an agreement with Lockheed Martin to begin work on the fabrication and design of an experimental nuclear thermal rocket and its engine ...

Phoebus 2A, the most powerful space nuclear reactor ever made, was fired up at Nevada Test Site on June 26, 1968. The test lasted 750 seconds and confirmed it could carry first humans to Mars. But ...

Jim Bickford is leading the Thin Film Isotope Nuclear Engine Rocket (TFINER) project to develop a system for propelling a craft through space faster and farther than ever before. This technology has ...

Humanity has lived in the space age for decades, but virtually every probe, rocket, and satellite shaping this era has relied on chemical propulsion. As scientists and engineers eye more distant ...

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A U.K. space tech company has revealed a secret project that could change how humans travel between planets. After ten years of quiet research, Pulsar Fusion has unveiled a nuclear fusion-powered ...

MIT master’s student Taylor Hampson is advancing research into nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), thanks in part to a NASA-sponsored initiative. Nuclear propulsion could dramatically shorten travel ...

Viewed from orbit, Jackass Flats — situated in southern Nevada about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas — could easily be confused for Mars. The alluvial basin is full of tan and gray regolith, hued ...

The best, in fact, the only, candidate for this is the Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) system or nuclear rocket. First conceived of in 1945, this is a rocket that replaces burning chemical fuel with ...