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By NASA
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space. This is an artist’s rendering of what the fully assembled system might look like.NASA The trip to Mars and back is not one for the faint of heart. We’re not talking days, weeks, or months. But there are technologies that could help transport a crew on that round-trip journey in a relatively quick two years.
One option NASA is exploring is nuclear electric propulsion, which employs a nuclear reactor to generate electricity that ionizes, or positively charges, and electrically accelerates gaseous propellants to provide thrust to a spacecraft.
Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are working on a system that could help bring nuclear electric propulsion one significant, technology-defining step closer to reality.
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space.
“By doing that, we eliminate trying to fit the whole system into one rocket fairing,” said Amanda Stark, a heat transfer engineer at NASA Langley and the principal investigator for MARVL. “In turn, that allows us to loosen up the design a little bit and really optimize it.”
Loosening up the design is key, because as Stark mentioned, previous ideas called for fitting the entire nuclear electric radiator system under a rocket fairing, or nose cone, which covers and protects a payload. Fully deployed, the heat dissipating radiator array would be roughly the size of a football field. You can imagine the challenge engineers would face in getting such a massive system folded up neatly inside the tip of a rocket.
The MARVL technology opens a world of possibilities. Rather than cram the whole system into an existing rocket, this would allow researchers the flexibility to send pieces of the system to space in whatever way would make the most sense, then have it all assembled off the planet.
Once in space, robots would connect the nuclear electric propulsion system’s radiator panels, through which a liquid metal coolant, such as a sodium-potassium alloy, would flow.
While this is still an engineering challenge, it is exactly the kind of engineering challenge in-space-assembly experts at NASA Langley have been working on for decades. The MARVL technology could mark a significant first milestone. Rather than being an add-on to an existing technology, the in-space assembly component will benefit and influence the design of the very spacecraft it would serve.
“Existing vehicles have not previously considered in-space assembly during the design process, so we have the opportunity here to say, ‘We’re going to build this vehicle in space. How do we do it? And what does the vehicle look like if we do that?’ I think it’s going to expand what we think of when it comes to nuclear propulsion,” said Julia Cline, a mentor for the project in NASA Langley’s Research Directorate, who led the center’s participation in the Nuclear Electric Propulsion tech maturation plan development as a precursor to MARVL. That tech maturation plan was run out of the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate awarded the MARVL project through the Early Career Initiative, giving the team two years to advance the concept. Stark and her teammates are working with an external partner, Boyd Lancaster, Inc., to develop the thermal management system. The team also includes radiator design engineers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and fluid engineers from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After two years, the team hopes to move the MARVL design to a small-scale ground demonstration.
The idea of robotically building a nuclear propulsion system in space is sparking imaginations.
“One of our mentors remarked, ‘This is why I wanted to work at NASA, for projects like this,’” said Stark, “which is awesome because I am so happy to be involved with it, and I feel the same way.”
Additional support for MARVL comes from the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project. The project’s ongoing effort is maturing technologies for operations around the Moon and near-Earth exploration, deep space science missions, and human exploration using nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion.
An artist’s rendering that shows the different components of a fully assembled nuclear electric propulsion system.NASAView the full article
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By European Space Agency
What’s harder than flying a single satellite in Earth orbit? Flying two – right beside each other, at proximities that would normally trigger collision avoidance manoeuvres.
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By European Space Agency
The 2025 ESA internship opportunities are now live! Positions are open in a wide range of fields, including engineering, science, IT, natural and social sciences, business, economics, and administrative services. This is your chance to launch your career in the extraordinary world of space exploration—don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to gain hands-on experience with one of the world’s leading space organisations!
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By European Space Agency
At the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Milan this week, ESA signed a contract for Element #1, the first phase of the HydRON Demonstration System. HydRON, which stands for High thRoughput Optical Network, is set to transform the way data-collecting satellites communicate, using laser technology that will allow satellites to connect with each other and ground networks much faster.
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA Develops Process to Create Very Accurate Eclipse Maps
New NASA research reveals a process to generate extremely accurate eclipse maps, which plot the predicted path of the Moon’s shadow as it crosses the face of Earth. Traditionally, eclipse calculations assume that all observers are at sea level on Earth and that the Moon is a smooth sphere that is perfectly symmetrical around its center of mass. As such, these calculations do not take into account different elevations on Earth or the Moon’s cratered, uneven surface.
For slightly more accurate maps, people can employ elevation tables and plots of the lunar limb — the edge of the visible surface of the Moon as seen from Earth. However, now eclipse calculations have gained even greater accuracy by incorporating lunar topography data from NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) observations.
Using LRO elevation maps, NASA visualizer Ernie Wright at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, created a continuously varying lunar limb profile as the Moon’s shadow passes over the Earth. The mountains and valleys along the edge of the Moon’s disk affect the timing and duration of totality by several seconds. Wright also used several NASA data sets to provide an elevation map of Earth so that eclipse observer locations were depicted at their true altitude.
The resulting visualizations show something never seen before: the true, time-varying shape of the Moon’s shadow, with the effects of both an accurate lunar limb and the Earth’s terrain.
“Beginning with the 2017 total solar eclipse, we’ve been publishing maps and movies of eclipses that show the true shape of the Moon’s central shadow — the umbra,” said Wright.
A map showing the umbra (the Moon’s central shadow) as it passes over Cleveland at 3:15 p.m. local time during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse. NASA SVS/Ernie Wright and Michaela Garrison “And people ask, why does it look like a potato instead of a smooth oval? The short answer is that the Moon isn’t a perfectly smooth sphere.”
The mountains and valleys around the edge of the Moon change the shape of the shadow. The valleys are also responsible for Baily’s beads and the diamond ring, the last bits of the Sun visible just before and the first just after totality.
A computer simulation of Baily’s beads during a total solar eclipse. Data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter makes it possible to map the lunar valleys that create the bead effect. NASA SVS/Ernie Wright Wright is lead author of a paper published September 19 in The Astronomical Journal that reveals for the first time exactly how the Moon’s terrain creates the umbra shape. The valleys on the edge of the Moon act like pinholes projecting images of the Sun onto the Earth’s surface.
A visualization of Sun images being projected from lunar valleys that are acting like pinhole projectors. Light rays from the Sun converge on each valley, then spread out again on their way to the Earth. NASA SVS/Ernie Wright The umbra is the small hole in the middle of these projected Sun images, the place where none of the Sun images reach.
Viewed from behind the Moon, the Sun images projected by lunar valleys on the Moon’s edge fall on the Earth’s surface in a flower-like pattern with a hole in the middle, forming the umbra shape. NASA SVS/Ernie Wright The edges of the umbra are made up of small arcs from the edges of the projected Sun images.
This is just one of several surprising results that have emerged from the new eclipse mapping method described in the paper. Unlike the traditional method invented 200 years ago, the new way renders eclipse maps one pixel at a time, the same way 3D animation software creates images. It’s also similar to the way other complex phenomena, like weather, are modeled in the computer by breaking the problem into millions of tiny pieces, something computers are really good at, and something that was inconceivable 200 years ago.
For more about eclipses, refer to:
https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses
By Ernie Wright and Susannah Darling
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Nancy Neal-Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-0039
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Editor wasteigerwald Contact wasteigerwald william.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Solar Eclipses Uncategorized Explore More
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