LOS ANGELES: The US hopes to send an astronaut to Mars in a nuclear-powered rocket, according to a senior Nasa official.

President George Bush may announce the plan, named Project Prometheus, at his State of the Union address on January 28, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. It would commit the US to the exploration of Mars and herald the development of a nuclear-powered propulsion system.

“We’re talking about doing something on a very aggressive schedule to not only develop the capabilities for nuclear propulsion and power generation but to have a mission using the new technology within this decade,” said Nasa administrator Sean O’Keefe. Currently, spacecraft travel at 18,000 miles per hour. The goal is to build a new vehicle which uses small nuclear reactors to give the engines a greater thrust and circumvent the problems of fuel supply. This would mean that the craft could reach Mars within two months as opposed to the six- or seven-month journey time currently projected.

“We’ve been restricted to the same speed for 40 years,” Mr O’Keefe said. “With the new technology, where we go next will be limited only by our imagination.”

Part of the attraction for President Bush in announcing the project would be the stimulus it might provide for scientists and engineers. Many of the pioneers of space travel are now retiring and have not been replaced. There is a precedent for announcing such a project at a time of national crisis: President Nixon launched the space shuttle programme during a recession as way of boosting the economy in California.

Nasa announced last year that it was preparing to spend one billion US dollars over the next five years on developing a nuclear rocket. The project throws up many questions about the effects of such travel on humans. Already astronauts are returning to Earth with a decrease of up to 30 per cent in their muscle mass and ten per cent in their bone mass.

The more arduous flight to Mars would increase such problems. There would also be medical concerns about radiation from the engines.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.