By the end of this year, Roskosmos has planned to sign a contract for the development of the Nuclon nuclear tug, which will be launched to one of Jupiter's satellites in 2030, Alexander Bloshenko, executive director of the state corporation for promising programs and science, told TASS.
“The contract for the preliminary design of the Nuclon space complex will be concluded by the end of this year. A space tug with a nuclear reactor from this complex will be used for flights to distant planets of the solar system, its first mission is scheduled for 2030, ”he said.
According to him, this is a full-fledged scientific program.
Bloshenko assures that at the first stage of the mission, scheduled for 2030, the tugboat in space will dock with the payload module and go to the moon, in which it will leave a research satellite. During the second stage, a bundle of the space tug and the payload module will fly to Venus, near which the separation of the corresponding scientific spacecraft will also occur. The third stage involves a flight to the moon of Jupiter.
Bloshenko specified that the Nuklon transport and energy module will be built on the principle of an open architecture, and its main feature will be a megawatt-class nuclear reactor.
In August 2019, it became known that within the framework of the state program “Space activities of Russia for 2013-2020”, design documentation was developed, a number of components of a ground prototype of a transport and energy module (TEM) based on a nuclear power plant of a megawatt class were manufactured and tested (“Nuclear tug”).
In November 2018, the appearance of a “nuclear tug” was presented in Russia.
In October, the state scientific “Keldysh Center” announced the successful completion of ground tests of the cooling system for a megawatt class nuclear power propulsion system.
The project entitled “Creation of a transport and energy module based on a megawatt-class nuclear power plant” was approved in 2010 by the presidential commission for modernization and technological development of the Russian economy. 17 billion rubles were allocated from the budget for its implementation.
In the period from 1970 to 1988, 32 spacecraft with a thermoelectric nuclear power plant were launched in the USSR, and in the period from 1960 to 1980 a nuclear rocket engine was developed and tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.
