The Tiangong-1 was the first space station launched by China. It was carried into orbit in September of 2011 aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket. It served as a manned laboratory and “experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities.” It is thirty five feet long and eleven feet in diameter. It weighs about eighteen thousand eight hundred pounds. Its orbit is about two hundred miles above the Earth.
       The Tiangong-1 is a pressurized habitat with a volume of about five hundred and thirty cubic feet. It is divided into two sections. The first section is a resource module with solar panels and the propulsion system. The second and larger section is the habitable experimental module. The habitable module contains two sleep “stations” and exercise gear. High resolution cameras allowed the ground station to monitor activities in the module. There are no toilets or cooking facilities in the Tiangong-1 itself. These are supplied by a docked Shenzhou spacecraft. When three people are manning the station, two sleep in the habitable module and the third sleeps in the Shenzhou spacecraft. The first manned mission to the Tiangong-1 was carried out in March of 2012, During this mission, both automated and manual docking procedures were successfully tested.  
         The planned operational lifetime of the Tiangong-1 was two years and originally it was to be deorbited in 2013. During its first two years in orbit, it was visited by a series of Shenzhou spacecraft, both unmanned and manned. In 2013, its operational lifetime was extended by two years. In March of 2017, the Chinese Space Engineering Office released a statement saying that the Tiangong-1 had “officially ended its service.” Months later, amateurs satellite trackers observing the Tiangong-1 concluded that the Chinese had lost control of the space station. In September, the Chinese announced that they had lost control of the Tiangong-1.
         The Tiangong-1orbit is rapidly decaying and it is dipping in and out of the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. It is estimated that the space station will disintegrate and fall to Earth sometime within the next few months. Fragments weighing over two hundred pounds may reach the ground. The Chinese will carefully monitor the descent of the space station and inform the United Nations when the Tiangong-1 makes its final descent. Predicting exactly where it will come down is impossible even days before it lands. Final location information will only be available a few hours before it falls.
       Many other large satellites have fallen to Earth and no one has ever been injured. The NASA seventy seven ton Skylab space station crashed to Earth in Australia in 1979. Some large pieces of debris fell outside of Perth in Western Australia.  In 1991, the Soviet twenty ton Salyut 7 space station fell from orbit. It was still docked with the Cosmos 1686, another twenty ton craft. The two spacecraft disintegrated above Argentina. Debris from the breakup rained down above the town of Capitan Bermudez.
       The Tiangong-2 is the successor to the Tiangong-1. It was launched in September of 2016. This space station is intended to be a testbed for technologies that will be utilized by China to launch a third space station which will be multi-modular and much larger.
Artist’s concept of Tiangong-1:

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       Sixty years ago on October 4th, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, and triggered the Space Race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The Sputnik satellite was sent into orbit by a Soyuz rocket. Since that historical launch, the Soyuz family of rockets was the workhorse for the Soviet space program, and, since the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, has been the workhorse for the Russian space program. Soyuz rockets are the only launch vehicles that are currently sending payload to the International Space Station. The Russian also still use the heavy-lift Proton rocket developed by the Soviets in the 1960s to launch commercial satellites into high-Earth orbit.
       These two families of Soviet/Russian launch vehicles have an excellent reputation from decades of use. However, lately, their legendary reliability has suffered. A series of recent failures raises the question of whether or not the plant in Voronezh that produces rocket engines for the Soyuz and Proton rockets is able to maintain the high level of quality control that is required for these engines to function properly.
        Problems with Soyuz and Proton engines in 2016 were found to be the result of manufacturing flaws at the Voronezh factory. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, had to send over seventy rocket engines back to the factory to have faulty parts replaced. One result was a one year hiatus of Proton launches. This lack of launch capability has injured Russian status in the commercial satellite launch market. Last year was the first time that the U.S. and China both carried out more launches than Russia.
       Many clients have chosen to have their satellites launched by SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX has managed to lower their launch costs by making their boosters reusable. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy-lifter will be tested this fall. It will be able to lift three times the load of any existing launch vehicle at one half the price.
       While Russia is obviously aware of the fact that it is becoming uncompetitive in the commercial launch business, it is not clear what they intend to do about it. There have been reports that they may manufacture a lower-powered Proton engine in order to reduce costs.
      The Khrunichev company which manufactures the Soyuz and Proton engines, is having serious difficulties. There have been criminal investigations of alleged mismanagement. A decision was made to sharply reduce its assets. A lot of the expensive real estate in western Moscow that belongs to the company is being slated for development.
      Russia has been working on the Angara rocket which will be a replacement for both the Soyuz and the Proton. There have been repeated delays in the Angara project and questions have been raised about whether it will ever be finished. Without a long track record of successful launches and with a greater construction cost than other rockets in the commercial launch market, its prospects are dim.
      The Russians will also be losing their monopoly for launches to the ISS soon. The SpaceX Dragon v2 and the Boeing Starliner crew capsules will be flying test missions to the ISS next year. The Russians have been working on the Federation which is a new crew capsule to replace the Soyuz capsule. A test flight has been tentatively scheduled for 2023 but there are few details available. Russia has also talked about sending manned missions to the Moon in the 2020s but little is known about those plans.
Soyuz rocket engines:

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       The releationship between U.S. and Russia has been deteriorating as investigations into Russian meddling in our last presidential election have proceeded. However, there is one area where cooperation has continued and is even expanding. That is in the exploration of space. The U.S. and Russia have collaborated on the constrution, maintenance and operation of the International Space Station. Now a new collaboration in space has just been proposed at the International Astronautical Congress that was held in Australia this week.
      NASA in the U.S. and Roscosmos in Russia just signed a statement of intent to work together to construct a new space station that will orbit the Moon. Few details of the agreement are available but it is known that it is part of NASA’s plan to eventually send manned missions to Mars. The project is being referred to a deep space gateway and it was announced earlier in the year by NASA. The gateway would function as a “home” base in Lunar orbit. It would contain residential quarters and research facilities. Spacecraft would be able to dock with the gateway the same way they do with the ISS. Even though NASA is developing the heavy-class Space Launch System rocket, the gateway would have to be launched in sections and assembled in orbit because it would be too big for a single launch.
       The focus of NASA space missions is subject to the whims of the politicians in Washington, D.C. During the Bush administration, NASA focused on the Moon. Then, when the Obama administration took over, the focus was shifted to Mars missions. With the arrival of the Trump administration, the focus shifted back to the Moon. In any case, whether further explorations of the Moon, manned missions to Mars or asteroid mining projects are the main focus of NASA, a gateway station orbiting the Moon would be useful to reseach and support such missions.
      In a press release, NASA’s acting administrator said, “Statements such as this one signed with Roscosmos show the gateway concept as an enabler to the kind of exploration architecture that is affordable and sustainable.” 
       NASA is cautious about committing to specific timelines for future projects but the original plan for the deep space gateway called for a one-year crewed mission at the operational station by 2030. In order to meet that goal, NASA and Roscosmos are working with private space companies on the development of new technologies that will be necessary.
       The International Space Station also involves the space agencies of Europe, Japan and Canada. The letter of intent that was just signed between the U.S. and Russia does not mention these other space faring countries or what possible involvement they may have in the gateway project. At the announcement of the agreement during the conference, a representative of Roscosmos said that the project could be open to the participation of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. All of these countries have an existing agreement with Russia with respect to space exploration and exploitation.
Artist’s concept of the construction of the deep space gateway:

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       There are many asteroids that cross the orbit of the Earth. Occasionally, one passes near the Earth. If a large asteroid hits the Earth, the consequences could be catastrophic. There have been a lot of discussions and debates about what could be done if astronomers detect an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. Unlike such natural disasters as volcanoes, hurricanes and earthquake, an asteroid strike is something that the human race might be able to do something about. However, if we are to have any chance, we must make preparations now and test various approaches to deflecting an asteroid.      
       An international group European Space Agency, the German Aerospace Center, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, NASA, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has been working on a dry-run to rendezvous with an incoming asteroid and deflect its course. The overall project is called Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment. The U.S. part of the project called Double Asteroid Redirection Test. The plan is to send a spacecraft to a distant asteroid named Didymos. It would smash into a tiny moon called Didymoon that orbits the asteroid and alter its trajectory if successful. The U.S. part has reached phase B which means that the plan has been approved but now it must be funded.
       The European part of the project is called the Asteroid Impact Mission. It consists of sending a small spacecraft to the rendezvous site in order to survey the impact and the reaction of the tiny moon. The ministers in charge of funding AIM rejected a three hundred million dollar request last December calling their part of the mission into question.  
       Didymoon, the target of the test mission, is big enough to cause serious damage if it hit the Earth. It is about five hundred feet wide. It would hit with an impact force equal to four hundred megatons of TNT. This is about a hundred times the force of the average nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal.
       Recently, the European scientists working on AIM have suggested altering the design of AIM to reduce the cost of the mission. They suggest reducing the size of and simplifying the complexity of the observational spacecraft that they will send to the watch the impact. This would cost about one hundred and fifty million dollars or about half of the cost of the recent funding request. There could also be a delay if the project design is altered. It would be best if both parts of the project happened at the same time but that is not absolutely necessary. One of the goals of the observation mission is to measure the mass of Didymoon. This could be done well after DART which is scheduled for 2022.
      The head of European Space Agency told a reporter that they will put forward a new proposal at the next ministerial meeting in 2019. He also said “It is important for humanity, as a species we have the means today to deflect an asteroid. We know it will happen, one day sooner or later. It’s not a question of if, but when. We have never tested asteroid deflection and there is no way we can test in laboratory. We need to know if our models are correct, our simulations work as expected.”

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      I have mentioned before that bacteria in spacecraft can develop into more virulent strains with antibiotic resistance. This adds to the biological problems that humans face when living in space beyond the atmosphere and gravity of the Earth. A recent experiment on the International Space Station provided additional detail on how these changes occur. The report was published in Frontiers of Microbiology.
       E coli bacteria were the subject of an experiment in space which subjected the bacteria to different concentrations of the antibiotic gentamicin sulfate which is known to kill it on Earth. The bacteria in space increased its cell number by thirteen times and reduced its cell column size by seventy three percent.
       The report reveals how bacteria act in space when they are not subject to gravity related effects such as buoyancy and sedimentation. The bacteria changes shape in order to survive in the new environment. This limits the way that bacteria can ingest nutrients or drugs to the process of natural diffusion. Because the surface area of the bacterial cells decreases when in space, the rate at which molecules of a drug around the cell can interact with the cell decreases. The cell membrane becomes thicker in space which also serves to protect the bacteria from the antibiotic. Bacterial cells also form clumps in space which might be a defensive process that would sacrifice cells on the surface of the cell clump in order to protect cells inside the clump.
       During the experiment, some of the E coli cells were seen creating membrane vesicles. These are small capsules that form on the outside of bacterial cell walls. They serve as messengers that allow the E coli cells to communicate with each other. When a clump of E coli cells reaches a critical mass, they can synchronize to start infecting a host.
       The lead author of the study, Luis Zea, said “We knew bacteria behave differently in space and that it takes higher concentrations of antibiotics to kill them. What’s new is that we conducted a systematic analysis of the changing physical appearance of the bacteria during the experiments. Both the increase in cell envelope thickness and in the outer membrane vesicles may be indicative of drug resistance mechanisms being activated in the space flight samples. This experiment and others like it give us the opportunity to better understand how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics here on Earth.”
        Our understanding of biological processes in space has increased our understanding of just how hostile that environment is. Not only are there negative effects on human bones, muscles, eyes and hearts but these experiments with E coli show that other hostile organisms become even more dangerous in space. It will be necessary to conduct more experiments in order to understand just exactly how to treat astronauts infected with these more dangerous bacteria. This will be especially important in long term missions such as manned missions to the planet Mars and other remote astronomical bodies.
E coli bacteria: 

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       The Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1976 by one hundred and seven countries. Among its provisions is a ban on putting any nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in Earth orbit. Of course there is the problem of being able to actually know exactly what is being launched into orbit by different countries and private firms. For all we know, there could be many nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in Earth orbit right now ready to be used at a moment’s notice. But setting aside that issue, is there any way that destruction could be rained down on targets on Earth from orbit that do not involve the listed types of weapons? As a matter of fact, such an option does exist.
       During the Vietnam war, the U.S. used a weapon called a “Lazy Dog.” These were two inch long steel pieces which had fins. Hundreds of these were dropped on Vietnam by planes. The principle of these steel projectiles is referred to as “kinetic bombardment.” These projectiles could be dropped from as low as three thousand feet and reach speeds of up to five hundred miles an hour. They hit with such force that they could punch through nine inches of concrete. These Lazy Dog projectiles gave rise to Project Thor.
             The U.S. Air Force has a design for a very simple device that could be used as a weapon from orbit. A simple tungsten rod could hit a target on Earth with the destructive power of a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. Project Thor was based on using a tungsten rod twenty feet long and one foot in diameter. The U.S. Air Force used the term “hypervelocity rod bundles” in a report. A magazine of these rods would be contained in a satellite. The rods would have fins and a small computer to control trajectory. These rods could be dropped from orbit a few thousand miles above the Earth. The rod would reach speeds of up to almost eight thousand miles per hour. When it hit, the rod would penetrate hundreds of feet into the earth. It would be able to destroy hardened bunkers or hidden underground military sites. Although the rod would cause a devastating explosion similar to a ground-penetration nuclear warhead, there would be no radioactive fallout.
      One big problem with the whole idea of Project Thor was the fact that it costs about ten thousand dollars per pound to launch anything into space. At twenty four thousand pounds per rod, it would cost two hundred and thirty million dollars just to put one rod in orbit above the Earth. However, the cost of launching is going down rapidly as private space companies vie for launch business. The new Falcon Heavy lifter from SpaceX will be able to launch twice the payload at one third the cost when compared to the current heavy launch vehicles. That would reduce the cost of putting on rod in orbit to about forty million dollars. The cost of one Minuteman III ICBM in today’s dollars is would be about fifty seven million dollars. This means that one of the kinetic bombardment rods would be cheaper to launch into orbit that it would cost for a new Minuteman missile. Considering that the annual U.S. defense budge is approaching six hundred billion dollars, forty million dollars to put a rod in orbit is really a small part of the budget and quite feasible.

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       Since the U.S. Space Shuttle program was ended in 2011 after one hundred and thirty five missions, the U.S. has had to rely on the launch capabilities of Russia in order to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Since retiring the Space Shuttle, NASA has been working with private contractors to develop a new space plane to carry astronauts and supplies to orbit. One of the space planes under development is known as the Dream Chaser spacecraft by Sierra Nevada.
       The Dream Chaser is thirty feet long which is about one fourth of the length of the Space Shuttle. It will be able to lift about twelve thousand pounds of cargo into space. It can be launched on top of a rocket but it will be able to return from space on its own and land on a runway like the Space Shuttle.
        In October of 2013, the Dream Chaser was undergoing its first approach-and-landing test at Edwards AFB. The DC successfully executed the glide portion of the test. But, when it was landing, the left main landing gear failed to deploy as designed and the DC skidded of the runway. Sierra Nevada was competing against Boeing and SpaceX as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to ferry astronauts to the ISS. About a year after the crash, the DC was removed from the fourth and final round of the program. Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts to develop the new manned space plane.
        Despite being dropped from the Commercial Crew Program, Sierra Nevada continued work on the DC for manned and unmanned missions. In January of 2016, Sierra Nevada was awarded a NASA commercial resupply contract for the ISS along with SpaceX and Orbital ATK. This contract is for unmanned cargo flights only.
        The DC will have a special cargo module attached to it for the launch and rendezvous with the ISS. Following separation from the ISS, the cargo module will detach and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere during reentry. The crew of the ISS will be able to use this cargo module to remove waste and used equipment from the ISS. The DC will then glide down and land at the former Shuttle Landing Facility at the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
       After four years of further work following the 2013 crash, the Dream Chaser prototype was delivered to NASA Armstrong last January for a series to test which included two captive-carry tests. Today a captive-carry test was executed by attaching a DC to a Columbia 234-UT helicopter. The two craft spent about an hour and three quarters flying around above Rogers Dry Lake before landing with the DC landing gear extended. The test was a complete success.
        Next test for the DC will be what is known as a free-flight test. The DC will be taken up to about twelve thousand feed and released so it can glide back to earth and land.
        Sierra Nevada continues to work on the development of a DC for manned flights under an unfunded Space Act Agreement. This manned DC will be able to carry up to seven astronauts to the ISS. Sierra Nevada is pursuing private funding to continue work on the manned D.C.
Dream Chaser:

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       It takes very powerful propellant and powerful engines to raise payloads out of the Earth’s deep gravity well. But once you are in space, there are much less powerful propulsion systems that can provide low thrust over time which can add up to substantial acceleration for station keeping in orbit and getting around in the solar system. Hall thrusters show great promise for this application.
       Hall thrusters use xenon gas. The xenon is turned into a plasma and electrical fields accelerate the ions, expelling them at seventy thousand miles per hour. The impulse imparted to the craft is very small, but it is constant.
      One popular configuration for Hall thrusters is a cylinder. This configuration can be miniaturized and the small surface to volume ratio helps to prevent erosion of the surface of the sides of the thruster which is a major problem with Hall thruster. Scientists at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have developed the design for a new inlet for CHTs. This new inlet increases thrust significantly. Their research is in this week’s edition of the journal Physics of Plasmas.
     CHT are specifically designed for low-power operations. Unfortunately, when the flow density of the propellant is low, there can be inadequate ionization of the xenon gas. Full ionization is important for the proper creation of the plasma and the generation of thrust. The new inlet allows the increase of the gas density in the discharge channel while the speed of the gas perpendicular to the direction of thrust is reduced. This leads to an improvement in thruster performance.
      One of the author’s of the Chinese paper said, “The most practical way to alter the neutral flow dynamics in the discharge channel is by changing the gas injection method or the geometric morphology of the discharge channel.”
      The new inlet design required one simple change in the original design. In the original design, the xenon gas is injected into the cylindrical chamber from a bunch of nozzles that point straight in toward the center of the cylinder. The Chinese researchers changed the orientation of the nozzles so that they are pointing in at an angle. The result of this change is to send the gas into a rapid circular motion which creates a vortex in the chamber.
       The Chinese researchers used COMSOL modeling software to simulate both of the injection angles. The new design with tilted nozzles caused the density of the gas near the periphery of the chamber to increase. Gas density is significantly higher and more uniform. This also helps to improve thruster performance. The researchers verified their simulation with experiments with physical hardware. The new nozzle configurations produced higher thrust values especially with a lower discharge voltage. When the discharge voltage was between one hundred and two hundred volts, the specific impulse rose between one and fifty percent.
       One of the papers authors said, “The work we report here only verified the practicability of this gas inlet design. We still need to study the effect of nozzle angle, diameter, the ratio of depth to diameter and the length of the discharge channel.” He also said that the vortex design will be flight-tested in CHTs and might be eventually used in actual spacecraft.
Harbin Institute of Technology logo:

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       One of the problems with our economic system is that it allows the unlimited accumulation of money by individuals. Often fortunes are wasted on the whims of immature selfish individuals on idle pursuits and expensive toys. The arbitrary decisions of the wealthy can affect the lives and incomes of millions of people. Some other wealthy people spend their money interfering with our political process. On the other hand, a few wealthy people spend money on creative activities. And a few spend money on socially worthwhile projects. As far as I am concerned, I am fine with extremely wealthy people spending their fortunes on getting the human race into space in a serious way.
       The Bloomsberg Billionaires Index and a consulting firm named Bryce Space & Technology took a look at space industry investments by billionaires. The names of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are very well known in space exploration and exploitation. But it turns out that there are another thirteen billionaires who have been investing in space ventures. Most of the billionaires mentioned in the report are from the tech industry but Sheldon Adelson, a casino owner, and Ricardo Salinas, the owner of the OneWeb satellite network are also on the list.
        Altogether, these sixteen billionaires have a collective net worth of over five hundred billion dollars. Jeff Bezos, who is currently the world’s second richest man, is putting a billion dollars a year into his space company, Blue Origin. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company has received six hundred million from him to create a service to take passengers on suborbital flights in the near future. Elon Musk invested a hundred million to start Space Exploration Technologies in 2002.
       Beyond the efforts of billionaires, many other space industry startups have been formed by investors in the last fifteen years. There is a network for space investors called Space Angels. They say that there are more than two hundred and twenty five private space companies that have gotten equity financing. It is estimated that over three hundred billion dollars has been invested in these companies in 2016 alone. Analysts warn that these ventures have high risk and that most investors have not yet received returns on their investment.
       New imaginative ventures are part of the new rush to space. There is a company called SpaceFlight, backed by Paul Allen who was the co-founder of Microsoft. It is accepting bookings for payloads on launch vehicles. Recently the company purchased the entire launch capacity of one of Musk’s Falcon 9 rockets and then sold portions of the load to different customers.
       One of the benefits of having private companies involved in the exploration and exploitation of space is the fact that, unlike national governments who had had a monopoly in space, private companies work hard to standardize components and to reduce overhead as much as possible. It has been estimated that to go back to the moon with manned flights would cost over one hundred and fifty billion dollars if done by a federal Apollo style project where every single component involved would be custom. On the other hand, using private contractors for components and launch services, it has been estimated that it may be possible for men to return to the Moon for around ten billion dollars. Considering that the budget for NASA is only twenty billion dollars, it is obvious that private companies are critical for the exploration of space.

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       NASA has just awarded a eighteen million eight hundred thousand dollar contract to BWXT Nuclear Energy to start on a conceptual design for a nuclear reactor for possible use on a manned Mars mission. BWXT is a subsidiary of BWX Technologies which provides nuclear components, nuclear fuel and nuclear services to the nuclear industry.
       The CEO of BWX Technologies said, Rex Geveden, BWX Technologies’ president and CEO, said yesterday: “We are uniquely qualified to design, develop and manufacture the reactor and fuel for a nuclear-powered spacecraft. This is an opportune time to pivot our capabilities into the space market where we see long-term growth opportunities in nuclear propulsion and nuclear surface power.”
       The reactor would burn low-enriched uranium which less than twenty percent uranium-235. It would be part of a nuclear thermal propulsion rocket engine that could propel a space craft to Mars and back. A new ceramic-metallic fuel called “Cermet” is being developed for the NTP.
        Nuclear thermal propulsion has a variety of benefits when compared to current chemically propulsion. The NTP engines are more efficient than current engines and they have a greater power density. The end result is that the entire propulsion system and fuel are lighter and occupy less space than current propulsion systems. A nuclear thermal rocket should have about twice the efficiency of the engines that powered the U.S. Space Shuttle main engines. It will be ideal for delivery of larger, automated payloads to distant worlds as well as providing the propulsion for manned missions to deep space.
        One of the biggest benefits of such an engine would be to reduce the travel time to and from Mars from six months to four months. This is very important because it would reduce the amount of fuel, food, and water that would have to be carried on the mission. In addition it would reduce the exposure of the human crew to radiation and a zero gravity environment both of which have serious impact on human health.
       The NASA contract includes the initial conceptual design of the reactor, the initial development of fuel and core fabrication, assisting in licensing for initial testing on the ground, and development of the engine test program. The contract is expected to take about three years and will extend through 2019 if Congress appropriates the funds and if the BWXT exercises the full range of options in the contract. NASA believes that the time is right for serious exploration of NTP engines. NASA believes that NTP could “significantly change space travel.”       
        The contract with BWXT is part of a NASA program called Game Changing Development. The GCD is part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. In the words of NASA representatives, it could “lead to entirely new approaches” for future space missions. It could “provide solutions to significant national needs.” The NTP project manager said “As we push out into the solar system, nuclear propulsion may offer the only truly viable technology option to extend human reach to the surface of Mars and to worlds beyond.”
       The idea of using nuclear power for space travel is certainly not new. NASA said “The USA conducted studies and significant ground tests from 1955 to 1972 to determine the viability of such systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred. Since then, nuclear thermal propulsion has been revisited several times in conceptual mission studies and technology feasibility projects. Thanks to renewed interest in exploring the Red Planet in recent decades, NASA has begun new studies of nuclear thermal propulsion, recognizing its potential value for exploration of Mars and beyond.”

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