fission reactor

BWX Technologies, based in Lynchburg, Va., will build the nuclear fission reactor at the heart of the engine.

In a debriefing meeting of the Manhattan Project in late 1945, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, who led the project to build the first fission reactor in Chicago during World War II, envisioned fusion reactors for power generation.

Powered by low-enriched uranium, the engine’s fission reactor will heat and vaporize liquid propellants, shooting the gases out of a nozzle to provide thrust.

“The goal going in is make sure that what we use on the moon from a fission reactor standpoint is also directly applicable for use on the surface of Mars,” says Michael Houts, manager of nuclear research at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

A modern fission reactor, utilizing enriched uranium, will have about 200 kilograms of material that was produced in this singular cosmic explosion.