Propulsion

A joint agency initiative to fly a civilian-precursor nuclear thermal rocket stage by 2028 was de-scoped to terrestrial ground test rigs following congressional budget reallocations, postponing orbital flight verification by at least four years.

Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center achieved over 251 seconds of continuous burn on a full-scale RDRE using copper-alloy additive manufacturing. Pressure-gain combustion provides a 15% leap in specific impulse over conventional chemical cycles.