Nuclear pulse propulsion is a technology that would work. It was being developed in the 1960s but it was stopped because of the nuclear test ban treaty and concerns over fallout inside the ...

If we achieve advanced nuclear, antimatter propulsion or other advance propulsion it would be possible to achieve near constant acceleration. This would enable travel times to Mars in the 3-8 day ...

NASA plans to send crewed missions to Mars over the next decade – but the 140 million-mile (225 million-kilometer) journey to the red planet could take several months to years round trip. This ...

On Episode 152 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik host Dr. Robert O'Brien, Director of the Universities Space Research Association's Center for Space Nuclear Research, for a fascinating ...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

Scientists and engineers are diligently working on innovative concepts to make the next era of human spaceflight more powerful and more efficient using nuclear propulsion. One of these designs, known ...

From bicycles to rockets, learning through experience – whether human or machine – is shaping the future of space exploration.

From 1958 to 1965, the U.S. government sponsored the Orion program, which developed the idea of nuclear pulse propulsion. This concept was to power spacecraft by dropping nuclear bombs and using the ...

How can fission-powered propulsion help advance deep space exploration, specifically to the outer planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th ...

A consortium led by Belgian engineering firm Tractebel has completed the European Space Agency-commissioned RocketRoll project on nuclear electric propulsion for space exploration. The consortium has ...