🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Kilopower reactor is tiny, and it could power the spacecraft of the future.
NASA and National Nuclear Security Administration engineers lower the wall of a vacuum chamber around the Kilopower reactor system. The chamber will help test how the system performs in space-like conditions. Want to start a space colony? Even if you don’t, space agencies across the globe do. Whether it’s a moon base now, à la the Trump administration’s plans for NASA, or a Mars landing later, such a colony will need a lot of power.
Remarkably, none of Kilopower’s components are that new. NASA has been working on space-ready nuclear reactors almost since the agency’s inception in 1958. But according to David Poston, a nuclear engineer at Los Alamos who’s working on the technology, such programs “grew too expensive or went on too long to be continuously funded.
And the timing couldn’t be more perfect. With plutonium scarcity making RTGs less useful, NASA needs a new source of power for its upcoming missions. Kilopower’s first trial run, on a robotic lunar mission, could come as soon as the mid-2020s. Early proposals from the agency also call for a charging station on the moon’s north pole, and Kilopower could fit the bill. The reactor would charge two autonomous rovers of around 250 watts each as they explore that area.
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