An Assessment of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Architectures for Cislunar Mission Profiles

The goals of the space domain are evolving rapidly in the defense, commercial, and scientific sectors, as these communities envision the future of deep space exploration. From this, there emerges the need for advanced propulsion systems that can reduce travel time while not adding significant weight and performance penalty to the vehicles. To achieve this, it is essential to generate sufficiently high levels of both thrust and specific impulse. One of the potential solutions to this is using Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) technologies, which are currently under active development. The objective of this study is to do a tradeoff study for NTP vehicles to assess performance improvements that they can offer, while keeping the mass penalty in check. To do so, this study carries out an assessment of potential NTP systems, by developing feasible reactor designs and then utilizing techniques such as advanced design methods to develop a parametric sizing space for NTP space vehicles for cislunar mission profiles. The results indicate that for future deep space missions that require heavier payloads and fuel weights, the NTP systems perform better than the chemical propulsion systems; hence, investments in scaling up reactors would be worthwhile for advancing the future of space exploration.