UK industrial group Rolls-Royce has announced it has received £2.9m funding from the British Space Agency to develop small nuclear reactors on future lunar bases.
"Rolls-Royce scientists and engineers are working on the
microjet program
to develop a technology that will provide the energy humans need to live and work on the Moon," the company said in a statement.
The group anticipates that a first reactor will be ready to
be sent to the Moon by 2029
.
It will be the size of a vehicle.
The micro nuclear reactors that Rolls-Royce manufactures are the size of a vehicle.
Photo: AFP
"Nuclear power has the potential to
considerably increase the duration of future lunar missions
and their scientific value," said Rolls-Royce, which will work with several British universities, including Oxford in the United Kingdom.
The funding comes on top of £249,000 from the British Space Agency announced in 2022. The aim is to enable the company to carry out a first demonstration of a lunar nuclear reactor.
Rolls-Royce is also developing
small modular reactors to produce electricity
as part of the UK's plans to speed up construction of new nuclear power plants on its soil.
The British space agency, which depends on the government,
recently failed in its first attempt to launch a rocket
into space, mounted on a Boeing 747 of the Virgin Orbit company.
The launch
was affected by an "anomaly"
that prevented the rocket from being put into orbit and was carried out within the framework of a consortium that brings together the British space agency and other companies.
The return of humans to the Moon would take place 50 years after the last mission of the Apollo Program.
NASA, the US space agency, announced in March that the
Artemis 2
space mission would carry a crew of astronauts around the satellite in 2024, for the first time since 1972.
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