Cislunar space is the region beyond Earth’s orbit all the way out to the Moon. (Image: NASA)
WASHINGTON — Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded contracts to three companies — Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse Government Services, and Intuitive Machines — for its two-track program to mature technologies needed to develop spacecraft that use nuclear fission, rather than solar panels, to provide electrical power to their subsystems such as on-board sensors, communications payloads and computers.
The contracts are for work on AFRL’s Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-orbit Nuclear Power (JETSON) effort, managed by the Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. JETSON was kicked off in late 2022, and formally launched in January with a duo of solicitations to industry, one for “high power mission application” and the other for “low power mission application” of the technology.
Specifically, both solicitations called for “spacecraft concepts and design descriptions that employ nuclear fission reactors, electric, or hybrid propulsion subsystems, and related support systems in critical areas such power conversion, PMAD [power management and distribution], on-orbit mobility, thermal regulation, deployable structures, radiation shielding, and electronic hardening.”
AFRL’s program manager for JETSON, Lt. Col. Tommy Nix, told the American Nuclear Society during a virtual panel Sept. 9 that the effort is looking to future Space Force missions beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), at approximately 36,000 kilometers, the outermost orbit now routinely used by military satellites.
“As we move farther and farther out from what our current mission set is, we’ll need higher power to cover the bigger volumes [of space,]” he said, noting that the service is planning “new architectures … providing a force presence across the new parts of space as we expand outside of the GEO belt.”
And while Nix did not go into details on those future missions, AFRL and other Pentagon space research organizations have been working on a number of projects to support Space Force operations in cislunar space — with Defense Department officials wanting to keep a keen eye on Chinese activities in and around the Moon. For example, DARPA is working on developing a nuclear thermal propulsion engine under the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program aimed at future deep space operations.
JETSON, like DARPA, is looking at fission reactors under the “high power” track, but not for propulsion systems. Instead, the idea is to mimic terrestrial nuclear reactors that split atoms to generate on-board electricity for spacecraft operating systems. The “low power” track is looking at using different isotopes than NASA uses for its low-watt radioisotope power systems that have equipped spacecraft, such as the interstellar Voyager probes. Obviously, a key goal of the program is to reduce the weight of terrestrial reactors, since every kilo adds to the price of space launch.
According to AFRL’s Sept. 29 contract announcements, Lockheed Martin was awarded $33.7 million for the high-power track to “mature the technical design of the JETSON spacecraft systems and subsystems to a preliminary design review level of maturity and to fully develop the overall program development and test program planning through critical design review.”
Westinghouse received almost $17 million under the same track “to mature relevant technologies, conduct analyses, trade studies, and explore risk reduction strategies to investigate how a high power, nuclear fission-system could be implemented from a subsystem, spacecraft, and architecture standpoint.”
Intuitive Machines was awarded a $9.5 million for the low power track, to provide “a new spacecraft concept and design description that employs compact radioisotope power system, electric and/or hybrid propulsion and related support systems in critical areas such as power conversion, power management and distribution, on-orbit mobility, thermal regulation, and radiation shielding/electronic hardening.”
All three contractors are required to deliver their products by Dec. 29, 2025.
BAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
Going the distance to defeat emerging jam threats.
L3Harris selloffs hampered by low bids, CEO says
“To the extent we can get a good price for what we’ve identified as non-core [businesses], we’ll do it. But too many of the offers are coming in low and people think we’re desperate to sell, and I can assure you we’re not,” said L3Harris CEO Chris Kubasik.
