An artist’s version of a DRACO spacecraft.
DARPA
The Pentagon’s research and development arm on Monday awarded a trio of companies with contracts to build and demonstrate a core-base propulsion system on a spacecraft in orbit by 2025.
General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin have won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA awards, under the agency’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program or DRACO.
The purpose of the program is deceptively simple: use a nuclear power propulsion system to propel a spacecraft out of the low-lying earth.
The Pentagon’s research and development agency says that a nuclear-powered spacecraft has the potential to achieve both the high power of a chemical-based propulsion system and the high efficiency of a system with electricity.
“This combination would give a DRACO spacecraft greater mobility to implement the Department of Defense’s core principle of rapid maneuvering in the moonless space (between Earth and the moon),” the agency said.
The contracts awarded to the companies are for the first 18-month phase of the program, with two cuts.
In Track A, General Atomics will address the preliminary design of a nuclear power reactor and the concept for a propulsion subsystem, with its $ 22.2 million contract.
In Track B, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin – $ 2.5 million and $ 2.9 million respectively – will be awarded, each developing spaceship concept designs.
“Nuclear power propulsion is a transformative technology that will dramatically change the way spacecraft operate, become more mobile and travel more efficiently to Mars and beyond in much less time than conventional propulsion systems,” said Bill Pratt, Lockheed Martin Space ‘s manager of Human Exploration Advanced Program, said in a statement to CNBC. “A lot of work has been done on nuclear propulsion in previous decades and we will leverage the expertise if we combine it with modern digital engineering modern spacecraft design and creativity to advance this new capability.”
Although the defense giant has regularly focused on this type of Pentagon work, this award represents a new national security contract for the company of Bezos, which focuses on a variety of space projects, including its tourism rocket New Shepard, a giant reusable rocket called New Glenn, and an astronaut lunar lander for NASA.
“Blue Origin is excited to support DARPA in the aging of space concepts for this key technology area,” Brent Sherwood, senior vice president of advanced development programs, told CNBC in a statement.
DARPA expects the first phase of DRACO work to be done by late 2022, with the next phases ready.