DARPA Lockheed nuclear spacecraft, Bezos’ Blue Origin, General Atomics

An artistic representation of a DRACO spacecraft.

DARPA

The Pentagon’s research and development department awarded contracts to three companies on Monday to build and demonstrate a nuclear propulsion system on a spacecraft in orbit by 2025.

General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin have won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA awards under the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program or DRACO.

The goal of the program is deceptively simple: use a nuclear thermal propulsion system to propel a spacecraft beyond low Earth orbit.

The Pentagon’s research and development agency says a nuclear spacecraft has the potential to achieve both the high power of a chemical-based propulsion system and the high efficiency of an electrically powered system.

“This combination would give a DRACO spacecraft greater maneuverability to implement the Defense Department’s core principle of rapid maneuvers in cislunar space (between Earth and Moon),” the agency said.

The contracts awarded to the companies cover the first 18-month phase of the program, with two tracks.

In Track A, General Atomics covers the preliminary design of a nuclear thermal reactor and the concept of a propulsion subsystem, with a contract worth $ 22.2 million.

In Track B, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin – awarded $ 2.5 million and $ 2.9 million respectively – will each develop spacecraft concept designs.

“Nuclear thermal propulsion is a transformative technology that will dramatically change the way spacecraft operate, increasing agility and allowing more efficient travel to Mars and beyond in much less time than conventional propulsion systems,” said Bill Pratt, Lockheed Martin’s Human Exploration Advanced manager. Space. Programs, it said in a statement to CNBC. “Much work has been done in the field of nuclear propulsion over the decades and we will use that expertise as we combine it with modern digital engineering, modern spacecraft design and creativity to advance this new capability.”

While the defense giant is often focused on this type of Pentagon work, this award represents a new national security contract for Bezos’s company – which focuses on a variety of space projects, including the New Shepard tourist rocket, a giant reusable rocket called New Glenn. and an astronaut lunar lander for NASA.

“Blue Origin is delighted to support DARPA in maturing aerospace concepts for this important field of technology,” Brent Sherwood, the company’s senior vice president of advanced development programs, said in a statement to CNBC.

DARPA expects the first phase of the DRACO work to be ready by the end of 2022, with the following phases up for grabs.

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