Nuclear-powered spacecrafts? NASA taps Blue Origin, GE to try it

NASA and the US Department of Energy awarded three $5m contracts to produce reactor-design concepts that could be used to ferry people and cargo to Mars someday.

Nuclear energy has lost favor in much of the world, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to outer space. The U.S. government is drawing on the expertise of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture, General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy and other companies to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft that can travel faster and farther — to Mars and beyond. NASA and the Energy Department awarded three $5 million contracts to produce reactor-design concepts that could be used to ferry people and cargo to Mars or propel scientific missions to the outer reaches of the solar system, the space agency said in a statement Tuesday.