Sustained cislunar logistics operations, including recurring support of the Lunar Gateway at EML1 and EML2, impose demanding propulsion requirements, including high ΔV budgets, restart capability, and long-duration propellant storage, which conventional propulsion approaches struggle to meet efficiently at scale. This study presents a novel cislunar mission architecture based on nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), operating at a specific impulse of 900 s with liquid hydrogen as propellant and a hydrazine Reaction Control System (RCS) for proximity and docking maneuvers. The architecture is evaluated analytically through sequential application of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation across two mission scenarios: a direct logistics transfer to EML1 (Scenario A) and a two-burn Gateway staging transfer from EML1 to EML2 (Scenario B), using a launch mass of 9000 kg, a 5% ΔV margin, and deterministic ΔV values of 3164 m/s for LEO→EML1, 160 m/s for EML1→EML2, and 37.36 m/s for RCS operations. The proposed architecture achieves a total propellant mass below 3044 kg and a total delivered mass between 5956 kg and 6071 kg across both scenarios. These results establish NTP as a technically credible foundation for scalable and sustainable cislunar transportation, with broad implications for the development of a permanent lunar economy.
Danescu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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