Some experts believing the Red Planet could be in the midst of a colonisation process by 2030. Now, one of the necessities for life to be built and sustained on Mars will be power, which is why Nasa is working on nuclear fission reactors that could work on Earth’s next door neighbour.

Under this £11million project , NASA has already built the small 6’5” reactors which they will soon test on Earth. If all goes to plan, could be shipped off to Mars in the future.

Nasa has attempted to make nuclear reactors for space before. In the 1960s it was working on the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) programme which developed the radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) and is now used by the Curiosity Rover on Mars.

Lee Mason, a Nasa employee who works on power and energy storage technology development at Nasa’s Glenn Research Center, told Space.com: “It’ll be the first time that we operate a fission reactor that could be used in space since [the] 1960s SNAP programme.”

The reactors work by splitting uranium atoms in half which generate huge amounts of power – which will be needed to generate oxygen, light, heat, electricity and even water.

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Author: Technology Vista