The three companies will demonstrate their ability to use monthly infrastructure using nuclear weapons, under a new joint NASA contract announced on Tuesday (June 21). NASA and the US Department of Energy have selected three projects that the government hopes to implement month at the end of 2020, to support the Artemis program of the lunar exploration center.
NASA also sees these contracts, valued at $ 5 million each, as being useful for exploring Mars and other deep spaceships in space. Selected groups are led by Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX (a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-Energy). Their goal in the next 12 months is to “provide NASA’s sensitive information from the industry that could lead to the integrated development of a certified aircraft crane system,” the agency said.
These are the Category 1 awards; NASA has not disclosed in a media statement whether the timeline will be for a Phase 2 contract, if that is part of the plan.
The recently announced contracts join a rapidly growing group of nuclear programs, especially on the military side, in order to continue the US government’s task of exploring the moon and the deepest recesses. On May 17, for example, the U.S. The Defense Innovation Unit announced two examples spacecraft contracts nuclear power and energy, intended to be an exhibition of orbital aircraft by 2027.
And on May 4, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced its next phase of the project to design, develop and integrate a nuclear-fired rocket engine to show flight in Earth orbit in 2026.
While the U.S. military Pursuing the task of monitoring trade and government activities in the cislunar space, NASA is also considering nuclear testing opportunities for workers nuclear. The facility is also partnering with DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, which aims to develop a thermal nuclear system for use on Earth’s surface and moon.
