UK backs Rolls-Royce project to create a nuclear reactor on the moon

• “Nuclear power has the potential to drastically enhance the duration of future Lunar missions and their scientific worth,” UK Space Agency says.
• Rolls-Royce has been operating on a Micro-Reactor program “to develop technologies that will present power essential for humans to reside and carry out on the Moon.”
• The UKSA will now present £2.9 million (about $3.52 million) of funding for the project.

Rolls-Royce has been operating on a Micro-Reactor program “to develop technologies that will present power essential for humans to reside and carry out on the Moon.”

Lorenzo Di Cola | Nurphoto | Getty Photographs

LONDON — The UK Space Agency described Friday it would back study by Rolls-Royce browsing at the use of nuclear power on the moon.

In a statement, the government agency described researchers from Rolls-Royce had been operating on a Micro-Reactor program “to develop technologies that will present power essential for humans to reside and carry out on the Moon.”

The UKSA will now present £2.9 million (about $3.52 million) of funding for the project, which it described would “give an initial demonstration of a UK lunar modular nuclear reactor.”

The new funds builds upon £249,000 supplied by the UKSA to fund a study in 2022.

“All space missions rely on a power provide, to help systems for communications, life-help and science experiments,” it described.

“Nuclear power has the potential to drastically enhance the duration of future Lunar missions and their scientific worth.”

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Rolls-Royce is set to carry out with a selection of organizations on the project, such as the University of Sheffield’s Sophisticated Manufacturing Investigation Centre and Nuclear AMRC, and the University of Oxford.

“Building space nuclear power delivers a distinctive chance to help revolutionary technologies and create our nuclear, science and space engineering capabilities base,” Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, described.

Bate added that Rolls-Royce’s study “could lay the groundwork for powering continuous human presence on the Moon, while enhancing the wider UK space sector, generating jobs and generating added investment.”

According to the UKSA, Rolls-Royce — not to be confused with Rolls-Royce Motor Automobiles, which is owned by BMW — is aiming “to have a reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029.”

The news out of the U.K. comes at a time when NASA is pushing ahead with its Artemis program, which is focused on generating what it calls a “sustainable presence on the Moon to prepare for missions to Mars.”

NASA is operating with international and industrial partners on Artemis. In July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the 1st distinct individual to set foot on the moon.