Have nuclear, will travel (1/25/23)

Happy Hump Day, Payload nation.

On Monday, we asked you all to predict how many space ads we’d see in Super Bowl LVII. The disclaimer is that we’re not talking about space companies, but any ad featuring the Moon, rocket, satellites, or other space visuals. Here’s the tally as of this morning:

We’ll check back in on Feb. 13 to see who won. To all of our international readers who have no interest in American football but still voted, thank you for your bravery.

Today’s newsletter: ⚡ Nuclear space propulsion🌠 AstroForge’s first mission💸 The term sheet

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A Fission Vision for Space Travel

After a 50-year hiatus, the US is planning to test a nuclear fission-powered thermal propulsion system on a spacecraft.

NASA said this week that it would team up with DARPA, the Pentagon’s R&D arm, to build, launch, and demonstrate a nuclear thermal engine. This early work is intended to pave the way for a crewed mission to Mars in the late 2030s. The joint project has a $110M budget this year and will likely cost hundreds of millions more through deployment, planned for 2027.

The significance: NASA and DARPA are focused on speeding up the voyage to Mars and other deep space destinations. “If we have swifter trips for humans, they are safer trips," NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said Tuesday.

The power of nuclear

There’s a reason the US hasn’t launched a nuclear spacecraft in more than five decades. Since signing the Outer Space Treaty in 1967—and thus agreeing not to place WMDs in orbit—nuclear thermal propulsion has been a gray area.

Still, the idea that nuclear engines pair best with crewed deep space missions has gained steam in recent years.

• Nuclear thermal propulsion is expected to produce far more thrust than chemical systems, speeding up long-duration journeys.

• A shorter trip = less exposure to radiation and fewer supplies needed.

• Nuclear engines are also thought to be more efficient than chemical ones.

Across the federal government, multiple agencies are pitching in to develop nuclear systems that would power and propel spacecraft in the coming decades. Lawmakers have also encouraged NASA to pursue nuclear propulsion, setting aside higher levels of funding than the agency requested for related R&D.

“While it is easy to maintain skepticism regarding near-term timelines for projects hoping to place nuclear material in space, the level of funding behind these civilian and military government programs provides reason to be optimistic,” wrote Ian Vorbach in a recent edition of SpaceDotBiz.

“Given that existing propulsion and power systems offer little realistic path for a sustained economy beyond the Moon, there seems to be an inevitability around the need for nuclear in space.”

The collaboration

This agreement brings NASA into DARPA’s existing DRACO program. DRACO—short for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations—currently consists of two tracks:

• Track A to develop the nuclear fission reactor, and

• Track B to design the spacecraft system and mission.

In 2021, DARPA awarded three DRACO contracts. $22M went to General Atomics in Track A, with $2.9M and $2.5M in Track B grants awarded to Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin, respectively.

Enter NASA

Through this partnership, the space agency will provide R&D support to the existing DRACO program. NASA will develop the nuclear engine, with DARPA integrating the system into a spacecraft and managing launch ops.

The mission itself is expected to demonstrate the efficacy of the nuclear engine, including its maneuverability. It will remain in Earth orbit, somewhere between 700 and 2,000 km above the Earth’s surface.

What’s next? Tabitha Dodson, DRACO program manager, told Reuters that the agencies are tentatively expecting to pick a spacecraft manufacturer by March. That contractor will be tasked with building the craft ahead of a 2027 demo.

Mining Space

Could this be the year of asteroid mining?

AstroForge, a YC W22 alum based in Huntington Beach, CA, is trying to make it happen. The company announced that it has booked two missions this year to get its asteroid mining tech to orbit and tested as quickly as possible.

Mining asteroids: About a decade ago, a few high-profile asteroid mining ventures failed to get off the ground, leading most to think the idea was neither investable nor commercially viable. Now, though, the cost of launch has dropped dramatically. And AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich thinks the time is right for another shot.

AstroForge closed a $13M seed round in May 2022 to develop and build its mining technology. The startup appears nearly ready to get the technology sent to space.

“We’re not going to have multiple redundancies, we’re not going to think of this in the way of, ‘this mission cannot fail,’” Gialich told Payload then. “We have to go into this in the way of, ‘if this is successful, it will be highly profitable.’”

The 2023 timeline

Mission 1: The company’s first mission, currently set to launch in April of this year aboard a Falcon 9, will send a refinery into orbit to test its mining tech in microgravity. The refinery will come pre-loaded with an “asteroid-like material,” per the company’s blog post, which the refinery will vaporize and then pick out individual components.

Mission 2: The second mission, currently slated for October 2023, will head deeper into space to get eyes on a target asteroid for the company’s first mining expedition.

This mission will launch on a SpaceX lunar rideshare. AstroForge tapped Intuitive Machines, OrbAstro, and Dawn Aerospace to provide components and services for the mission.

Sponsored

ICYMI

Did you miss our live webinar on democratizing manufacturing in the space industry with First Resonance? If so, good news. We recorded the full thing and you can watch it at your leisure using the link below.

In Other News

• Rocket Lab ($RKLB) launched its first Electron from US soil and deployed three satellites for HawkEye 360.

• Boeing ($BA) and NASA are targeting April for Starliner’s first crewed flight test.

• Next steps for Starship: destack Ship 24 from Booster 7, then conduct a static fire of the latter’s 33 Raptors.

• Researchers found a rare 17 lb. meteorite in Antarctica, among other space rock gems.

• Elon testified in court that he would have sold SpaceX shares to fund taking Tesla private in 2018.

• NASA will collect and curate Mars Return samples in a new office at Johnson Space Center.

The View from Space