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Telescopes and space missions

Telescopes and space missions

Nuclear-powered spacecraft: why dreams of atomic rockets are back on

01 Feb 2024

Launching rockets into space with atomic bombs is a crazy idea that was thankfully discarded many decades ago. But as Richard Corfield discovers, the potential of using the energy from nuclear-powered engines to drive space travel is back on NASA’s agenda

A depiction of the DRACO nuclear-powered rocket heading into space
Going nuclear America’s DRACO rocket will use the heat from a fission reactor to propel it into space. (Courtesy: Lockheed Martin)
In 1914 H G Wells published The World Set Free, a novel based on the notion that radium might one da

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Richard Corfield is a science writer based in West Oxfordshire, UK
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