A team from Ohio State University made the breakthrough using liquid uranium to directly heat rocket propellant in order to travel faster with less fuel.<\/p>\n
The centrifugal nuclear thermal \u00adrocket (CNTR) system is more efficient than current rocket technologies, as well as other nuclear propulsion engines, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn recent years, there has been quite an increased interest in nuclear thermal propulsion technology as we contemplate returning humans to the moon,\u201d Dean Wang, an associate professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State, said. \u201cBut beyond it, a new system is needed, as traditional chemical engines may not be feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research, which was partly funded by Nasa, suggests different types of propellant could be used for the next-generation engines, including chemical compounds such as methane that can be mined from asteroids.<\/p>\n
\nYou could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Several technical and engineering challenges still need to be overcome before it can be properly tested, with this expected to take another five years.<\/p>\n
If successful, the heightened capabilities would cut round-trip human missions to Mars from around three years to a single year, as well as allow robotic missions to outer planets such as Saturn and Neptune.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have a safe one-way trip to Mars in six months, for example, as opposed to doing the same mission in a year,\u201d Spencer Christian, a PhD student in engineering at Ohio State, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on how well it works, the prototype CNTR engine is pushing us towards the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research team hopes to perform a laboratory demonstration of the technology in order to see how well it performs under extreme conditions.<\/p>\n
The team also called for more funding towards nuclear propulsion research.<\/p>\n
The rocket was detailed in the journal Acta Astronautica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team from Ohio State University made the breakthrough using liquid uranium to directly heat rocket propellant in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,1024,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-66918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}