[Global Times Comprehensive Report] Sean Duffy, acting director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), recently announced that a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor will be deployed on the lunar surface by 2030, thus "ensuring the leading position of the United States in the field of manned lunar landing". However, the US "Space" website said on August 31 that NASA's move faces new challenges in many technical fields.

Daphne set a specific timetable for NASA's previously conceived Moon Nuclear Reactor Project and asked the industry to consult within 60 days to find enterprises capable of delivering nuclear reactors to the moon by 2030 and space," said the website, saying that when humans started deep space exploration, learning to use local resources was critical toining life systems outside the Earth, "everything can start from the moon nearest to Earth."

The nuclear reactor could serve as a source of electricity for the U.S.-led international lunar base, supporting astronauts' long stay on the lunar surface. However, NASA's previous plan was to develop a 40-kilowatt lunar surface nuclear fission power generation system, which is planned to be deployed on the moon in the early 1930s. Now the power of nuclear reactors has "doubled", which means that its volume and weight will increase significantly, especially the need to greatly thicken the protective barrier, which is a great challenge to the carrying capacity of existing spacecraft.

The challenge of deploying nuclear reactors on the moon is much more than this. In order to promote human sustainable exploration of the moon, using local resources such as water and oxygen to sustain life, using hydrogen and oxygen as a fuel for the spacecraft can greatly reduce the amount of raw materials needed from the Earth, thereby significantly reducing the cost. At present, NASA plans to use the electricity provided by the nuclear reactors to obtain enough hydrogen and oxygen. But this means that the deployment of the nuclear reactor must be located close to the available lunar water ice resources, "At the moment, NASA has not yet a distribution map of the lunar surface water ice resources."

The good news is that NASA¡¯s ongoing series of lunar probe projects ¡°can relatively quickly obtain information on the distribution of lunar water ice and help scientists determine which water ice resources are worth exploring.¡±NASA has completed the construction of the Volatile Survey Polar Observatory (VIPER), the unmanned lunar rover originally developed to sample the lunar water ice layer and map the first lunar water resource map, it has passed all environmental tests, just because the related project was cancelled in 2024 and is currently waiting for a trip to the moon.

In addition, even if NASA has determined where nuclear reactors will be deployed on the moon, it is necessary to ensure that they are adequately protected. Because the moon's surface is close to the vacuum, there is no medium that causes the nuclear reactor not to release the heat produced by the thermal matching and thermal conduction to the outside world and can only be heated by the least efficient thermal radiation, so the nuclear reactor on the moon's surface needs a considerable area of heat dispersion. And the moon is very vulnerable to meteorites, so the moon's nuclear reactors and accompanying heat dispersion facilities need additional reinforcement.

At the same time, when the spacecraft landed on the surface of the moon, the tail of the accelerated engine injection would cause the lunar surface loose moon shock to any facility near the landing point. The study found that the lunar particle edges were very sharp, they clinged in the high-speed tail, and the damage to the surrounding objects was quite severe. NASA has confirmed that this injection tail would have a serious impact on the nearby facilities. In 1969, the Apollo 12 spacecraft landed about 163 meters from the Explorer 3 detector, resulting in American astronauts discovered that the surface of the detector was significantly damaged under the engine¡¯s tail. The U.S. planned new generation of the Armageddon moon lander was equipped with