Nuclear thermal propidsion is the high thrust, high specific impulse rocket engine technology of choice for future missions to Mars and beyond. Previous engines designed under NASA's Rover program employed highly enriched uranium, a fuel that is impractical to use in today's political climate. This paper delves deeper into a previously explored optimized, low enriched uranium (LEU) tungsten cermet core design. Generally, this design is based on the Pewee reactor built by NASA under the Rover program. However, multiple modifications are introduced to optimize the proposed LEU engine to produce the maximum efficiency while meeting NASAs ground rules as defined in the latest Mars reference missions. This paper presents thermal-hydraulic sensitivity studies of radial power peaking and fuel centerline temperature to establish their effect on the nuclear thermal rocket's performance and to justify the fuel material selection. Additionally, optimal designs are outlined for various cases other than the one described in NASA's DRA 5.0.
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