The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) was a planned spaceflight demonstration mission under the joint auspices of DARPA, NASA, Lockheed Martin, and BWX …

Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program is an effort to advance …

Jun 30, 2025 · DARPA ends its DRACO nuclear-thermal propulsion program. Costs outweigh benefits as launch prices fall.

Jun 27, 2025 · WASHINGTON — The decision by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to kill its five-year-old Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) …

Jul 8, 2025 · The US Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has cancelled the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) project to …

Develop nuclear propulsion capabilities that can be directly leveraged or readily evolved to meet the Agency’s future missions, including human exploration of Mars and deep space science

Jul 21, 2025 · NASA and DARPA had selected Lockheed Martin and BWXT in 2023 to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion demonstration spacecraft for NASA/DARPA’s DRACO program, but …

- While the primary mission of DRACO is to enable fast transit time between Earth and the moon, the development of nuclear powered spacecraft propulsion is also expected to open up deep space …

NTP systems are presently under development by multiple government agencies. NASA’s Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP) project aims to demonstrate a hydrogen-fed NTP engine at 900 s specific …

Jul 26, 2023 · WASHINGTON — DARPA and NASA have jointly awarded Lockheed Martin a $499 million deal to design and build an experimental rocket using a nuclear thermal propulsion engine …