"Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon" is not a headline I imagined reading before last week. Sure, as a sci-fi loving nerd, I could see a future where nuclear power played a role in permanent Moon settlements. But the idea of NASA building a 100-kilowatt microreactor there in the next five years seemed ridiculous. Not so, according to scientists.<br /> "I have no idea why this is getting so much play," Professor Bhavya Lal tells me over the phone, with a hint of exasperation in her voice. Lal's response makes sense once you understand the arc of her career; she has spent much of her professional life thinking about how the US should use nuclear power to explore space. At NASA, she served as the acting chief technologist, and was awarded the agency [...]
After focusing its big Google I/O 2025 on AI tech and Gemini’s latest features, Google has new hardware. The next Made by Google event kicks off tomorrow, and Google has already confirmed how at lea [...]
Building a working nuclear fusion reactor has proven to be a daunting challenge even for multiple wealthy nations, as we've seen with the much-delayed ITER project. However, a private start-up ca [...]
The first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis moon program may take off in a matter of days, with a launch window that opens on April 1, and as preparations are underway for that, the space agency i [...]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted approval to TerraPower to begin construction of a reactor in Wyoming. The project is the first new US commercial nuclear reactor in about a decade, accord [...]
At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital d [...]