NASA and DARPA Collaborate on Nuclear Rocket
In an unprecedented endeavor to speed up human exploration of the red planet, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have announced a collaborative program with industry leaders Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to develop and test a nuclear propulsion system that could significantly reduce the travel time to Mars. The program, known as DRACO, short for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, comes with a price tag of $499 million and seeks to revolutionize the future of interplanetary travel and satellite maneuvering.