IT IS going to take a lot longer to get a nuclear-powered spaceship to Jupiter’s icy moons than NASA thought: the space agency’s first designs for a nuclear spacecraft are too massive to get out of Earth orbit, 91av has learned.
NASA’s initial design for Project Prometheus – a $3 billion plan to send a probe powered by a nuclear reactor to Jupiter’s three icy moons in 2008 – weighs in at a hefty 20,000 kilograms. That is far too heavy to reach Earth escape velocity even with planned upgrades to the US’s two biggest launch rockets. However, project director Alan Newhouse remains hopeful: “We think we can get the mass down,” he says.
Despite Newhouse’s optimism, the setback will delay the mission further. Earlier this year, NASA said the Jupiter moons mission would fly “no earlier than 2011” – three years after the original proposal – but it is likely the actual launch will now be even later.
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That’s because Prometheus is far more ambitious than the 6-metre James Webb Space Telescope. JWST is the follow-up to Hubble and is supposed to fly in 2011, but its design was only selected last year. So the chances of Prometheus getting off the drawing board and into space on the same timescale are extremely slim.
The mission to Jupiter’s moons is estimated to last 15 years. NASA hopes that using nuclear power will overcome the power restrictions that hindered previous missions to Jupiter and beyond.