A cooling system as large as a football field for a ship to Mars

One of the biggest goals today in space exploration is to send people to Mars. However, reaching Mars faces many technical challenges, including extreme distances. Current spacecraft are estimated to need about 2-3 years for a round-trip flight to Mars, because this planet is 225 million km from Earth.

Nuclear power engines can help speed up this process. Therefore, a team of experts at NASA Langley Research Center (NASA Langley) is developing a new system called MARVL (Module Assembly Radiator for Nuclear Electric Vehicles) to realize the application of engines. nuclear power for space travel, Interesting Engineering reported on January 14.

The MARVL project focuses on developing a modular cooling system for nuclear electric propulsion. A special feature is that the system is made up of small parts that can be reassembled by robots in space, making the system more practical for large-scale space missions.

“This way, we don’t need to try to cram the entire system into one rocket compartment. That way we can relax the design a bit and really optimize it,” said Amanda Stark, communications engineer. heat at NASA Langley, a member of the MARVL project team, explains.

Nuclear electric propulsion uses a nuclear reactor to generate electricity. This electricity is then used to ionize and accelerate the gas, creating powerful thrust for the spacecraft. However, nuclear reactors need to generate large amounts of heat for long-distance space travel. Traditional designs tend toward large, inseparable heatsinks that are difficult to fit in a rocket bay. When fully expanded, the cooling system can be as large as a football field. Therefore, folding it into a rocket is considered a big challenge.

That is why the MARVL project was born. MARVL solves this problem by allowing the cooling system to be assembled in space. Instead of launching the entire system at once, the rocket can carry individual components into space. This provides greater flexibility for the design and delivery process.

NASA plans to use robots to assemble heat sinks for nuclear electric propulsion engines. These plates will promote the flow of liquid metal coolant, such as sodium-potassium alloy, for effective heat dissipation.

The MARVL project has received funding from NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The project team, including experts from Boyd Lancaster, NASA Glenn and NASA Kennedy, had two years to develop the idea. After this period, they will conduct a small-scale test on the ground.