Part 1 of 2 Parts
Space faring nations are now engaged in a race to dominate the region between the Earth and the orbit of the Moon. After years of hints but few details, a major Russian developer of military spacecraft has suddenly publicly displayed the first pictures of a huge nuclear-powered space transport which is reportedly being constructed at the company’s facilities in St. Petersburg. The KB Arsenal Design Bureau is known for the nuclear-powered satellites it built for the Soviet Union. One of its satellites crashed in the Arctic region of Canada in 1977. The KB Arsenal company is the prime contractor for the new Russian spacecraft.
A set of photos and computer-generated images originating from KB Arsenal appeared on the Internet in 2020. This material clearly revealed the latest version and planned operation of a very big space tug propelled by electric engines and powered by a nuclear reactor. The project is officially named the Transport and Energy Module, or TEM, has been well known to observers of the Russian space program from more than ten years.
The roots of the project can be traced to the dawn of the Space Age. The TEM concept is trying to combine a nuclear reactor with an electric rocket engine. The electric propulsion system heats up and accelerates ionized gas to create a jet that generates thrust for the craft. This type of engine is known as either an ion or plasma engine. When measured per unit of spent propellant mass, electric rocket motors are much more efficient than traditional liquid or solid propellant rockets. However, the thrust produced by such engines is relatively low at any particular time. In addition, they require a great deal of electricity to operate. For this reason, until recently, the use of electrical propulsion for space flight was mostly limited to orbital adjustment systems or to deep-space mission. For deep space missions, the spacecraft can take advantage of ion engines low thrust over an extended period of time.
In order to scale up the operation of the electric thrusters with their big power demand, engineers have been considering the replacement of heavy and bulky solar panels with nuclear power sources. Nuclear reactors could supply plenty of electricity for years or even decades. They would not be dependent on solar radiation which is weak in the remote cold regions of the Solar System. Deep space missions such as Voyager, Cassini and many other required nuclear thermoelectric systems to power them.
However, the development of nuclear reactors for use as space propulsion systems still had to take place on the surface of the Earth. Environmental and safety concerns served to slow down such development because of fears that test launches might fail and result in the debris from damaged or totally-destroyed nuclear reactors falling back to Earth. Even so, by the early Twentieth Century, the Russian military showed renewed interest in the great capacity of nuclear reactors that could provide electricity not just for propulsion but also for other equipment onboard large spacecraft. This could include powerful radar antennas intended for surveillance of both the surface of the Earth and objects in Earth orbit.
Please read Part 2 next