“I introduced the project at the start of the class in September and there was so much interest, I decided to create three separate teams,” Nassersharif said. When Nassersharif, distinguished university professor, capstone design director and professor and Nuclear Engineering Program director, first set up the project, he envisioned a four-student team. The students are enrolled in Professor Bahram Nassersharif’s senior capstone mechanical engineering class, which spends a year working on problems or projects from industry and then delivers design and/or production recommendations, prototypes and more. The project involves nuclear thermal propulsion, which scientists and engineers say can get astronauts to Mars more quickly and safely than they can with current chemical propulsion and technology. 7, 2022 – Thirteen University of Rhode Island mechanical engineering students are working with NASA and other prestigious universities on a project that could cut in half the travel time for a human mission to Mars. News Research News Releases Journal News Medical News Science News Life News Business News Expert Pitch Google Fact Check Research Alert Marketplace News With Video/Audio Multimedia RSS Feeds by The study with Rolls-Royce could help to “propel our next generation of astronauts into space faster and for longer, significantly increasing our knowledge of the universe”, she said.Latest News Coronavirus News Currently Embargoed Late last year the US government issued a new space policy directive to advance Nasa’s nuclear developments.Īmanda Solloway, the UK’s science minister, said nuclear power “presents transformative possibilities for space exploration”, and could help to create jobs. The US has undertaken several nuclear space programmes in recent decades. US scientists first tested nuclear spacecraft technology in the Nevada desert in the 1950s and 1960s before the programme was cancelled in 1971. The company hopes to build several small modular nuclear reactors on land too, to help meet the UK’s expected growth in demand for electricity.ĭave Gordon, the head of Rolls-Royce’s defence division, said the UK’s “pioneering project” into nuclear space propulsion could make use of “a real niche UK capability” by building on Britain’s existing nuclear industry and supply chain.īritain’s plan to build atomic spacecraft will not be the first. Rolls-Royce has provided the nuclear propulsion technology used to power the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet for 60 years. The government hopes nuclear technology could transform space travel by providing plentiful energy to power the spacecraft as they travel further from the sun and are unable to make use of solar energy. “This study will help us understand the exciting potential of atomic-powered spacecraft, and whether this nascent technology could help us travel further and faster through space than ever before,” he said. The partnership between Rolls-Royce and the UK Space Agency will bring together planetary scientists to explore how nuclear energy could be used to “revolutionise space travel”, according to the government.ĭr Graham Turnock, the chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said using nuclear power in space was “a gamechanging concept that could unlock future deep-space missions that take us to Mars and beyond”. The aerospace company hopes nuclear-powered engines could help astronauts make it to Mars in three to four months, twice as fast as the most powerful chemical engines, and unlock deeper space exploration in the decades to come. Rolls-Royce and UK Space Agency hope to ‘revolutionise space travel’ with deal to build nuclear propulsion enginesīritish spacecraft could travel to Mars in half the time it now takes by using nuclear propulsion engines built by Rolls-Royce under a new deal with the UK Space Agency.
Published in the Guardian – 12 January 2021
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