Engineering Commons^™

Lightweight, High-Temperature Radiator For In-Space Nuclear-Electric Power And Propulsion, Briana N. Tomboulian

Doctoral Dissertations

The desire to explore deep space destinations with high-power and high-speed spacecraft inspired this work. Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), shown to provide orders of magnitude higher specific impulse and propulsion efficiency over traditional chemical rockets, has been identified as an enabling technology for this goal. One of large obstacle to launching an NEP vehicle is total mass. Increasing the specific power (kW/kg) of the heat radiator component is necessary to meet NASA’s mass targets. This work evaluated a novel lightweight, high-temperature carbon fiber radiator designed to meet the mass requirements of future NEP missions. The research is grouped into three …