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, Â鶹´«Ã½ 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,”…
