In December last year, U.S. President Trump signed the 'Space Command No. 1,' announcing that the United States will return to the moon and eventually to Mars.
Signing orders is simple and difficult to implement. Even if Musk planned to launch a spacecraft to Mars on schedule in 2022, it would be a big problem to ensure energy supply after landing.
Fortunately, NASA has successfully tested the Kilopower mini-nuclear reaction and will provide energy assurance for the future Mars mission.
Kilopower nuclear reactor
Kilopower is a mini-nuclear reactor jointly developed by NASA, Los Alamoli National Laboratory and the Department of Energy. The U235 uses nuclear fuel with output power ranging from 1 KW to 10 KW. Compared with today's space missions using solar panels and gas generators, However, power generation is not affected by the environment, there is no worries about fuel depletion.
According to NASA calculations, a Mars base needs about 40 kW of power generation, as long as four or five Kilopower nuclear reactors can meet demand.
However, transporting nuclear reactions to Mars, 55 million kilometers away, is not a simple matter. The Kilopower must be small and light.
At present, nuclear reactors based on the fission principle have low energy conversion rate and most energy transfer heat is emitted. Therefore, nuclear power often adopts water-cooling as a heat-dissipating method, but bulky water-cooling equipment is obviously not suitable for space missions. Therefore, researchers adopt a new cooling method - -Heat pipe.
A large number of heat pipes are arranged around the Kilopower nuclear reactor. A part of the heat is used to drive the Stirling engine through the heat pipes to generate electricity. The other part of the heat continues to reach the umbrella heat pipes through the heat pipes and is radiated to the atmosphere.
Kilopower is very simple in principle, but it is not that simple to get it up and running on Mars with an average nuclear surface temperature of -63 ° C.
NASA estimates the total weight of the four Kilopowers range from 5.8 tons to 7 tons, the weight that future launch vehicles can afford.
Kilopower deploys the imagination chart under the art pen
The current Kilopower test is progressing well and is expected to conduct a full power test in March this year.
Musk's heavy falcons have been delayed for so many times that landing on Mars is hopeless in 2022. Lockheed Martin's 'Mars Camp Project' was a matter of 10 years later. Perhaps humankind returned to the moon when Kilopower was mass-produced. NASA Consider reviving a nuclear powered aircraft with Kilopower.
The United States in the 1950s developed the NB-36H nuclear-powered aircraft
