Mars with Kilopower

Mars with Kilopower

We would need power on Mars for two

primary reasons. The first is the

astronauts need power for their habitat
so that they can make oxygen, we can

purify water, but prior to their arrival
we need to make liquid oxygen and

propellant so that they can get off the
Martian surface. Kilopower is a small

nuclear reactor concept that is very
simple and uses a minimum number of

parts in order to produce power. Power is
the lifeblood of our exploration and

expansion into space. 

The kilopower

system we're testing now is enough to

power many ambitious deep-space missions
to the outer planets, to the moons of Saturn

and Jupiter, and even out past Pluto. Kilopower is a result of lessons

learned over the past decades of trying
to get space reactors established. We

went back and tried to make this system
as simple as we could. It ranges in size

from one kilowatt, about the power needed
for say a household toaster, up to 10

kilowatts and at 10 kilowatts we would
use four or five of them on Mars in

order to make fuel and to produce power
for the habitat.

 It has a solid metal

block of fuel that we fission that
produces heat; that heat is used to heat

heat pipes, which are tubes full of
sodium metal that we boil, and that

delivers heat to what's known as the
Stirling Engine Converter. The Stirling

Engine Converter is a simple heat device
that uses temperature differential to

make electricity. NASA chose Los Alamos
to do the nuclear reactor design because

of our long history with doing this type
of work going back to the 1950s and 60s.

We also have some of the world's leading
experts in space reactor design. In the

future we want to take Kilopower to
the next step. We want to test more of

its reliability and its safety and also
do the types of tests NASA requires in

order for a system to actually go into
space.