Engineers say the power plant can be shipped to the Red Planet on the Zeus – a future Russian nuclear-powered spacecraft that is expected to begin flight tests in 2030.
Specialists from the Arsenal Design Bureau – a St. Petersburg-based subsidiary of the Russian space agency Roskosmos that specializes in the manufacture of spacecraft, satellites and other space technologies – have proposed the construction of a nuclear power plant for a future Russian base on Mars.
Sputnik was able to familiarize himself with the proposal – which recommends using technologies developed for the interplanetary space tug Zeus for a stationary nuclear reactor also for the surface of Mars.
According to Arsenal’s proposal, the reactor would be shipped to the Red Planet aboard the Zeus and propelled to the surface with a parachute system. After landing, the power plant would be activated to provide power to a potential Russian Martian base.
In addition, engineers say that if Zeus were to be stationed at the Lagrange point between the Sun and Mars (i.e. the point in space where the gravitational forces of these bodies are equally strong), its communications sensors and transmitters would be on board as a “high-speed channel for the transmission of information to Earth from the surface of Mars and from spacecraft orbiting the planet ”.
Previously, Sputnik had reported that the proposed megawatt-class electric propulsion system of the Zeus project would allow him to disable the control systems of enemy spacecraft with an electromagnetic pulse and even fire laser beams.
Designers at Moscow’s Keldysh Research Center have also suggested that the spacecraft class could be used as a component in the Russian air defense network to detect targets from orbit and relay that information to ground-based missile systems.
Russia has been working on the creation of an interplanetary spacecraft with a nuclear power plant since 2010. In 2019, at the MAKS International Aviation and Space Show outside Moscow, a concept for the space tug was presented for the first time with a more detailed presentation at the ARMY 2020 forum.
Last December, Roscosmos signed a $ 56.5 million contract with the Arsenal Design Bureau for experimental design work for the Zeus. This work is expected to be completed by 2024, and flight tests will hopefully begin in 2030.
In June, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said that Zeus tugs could be sent to other planets, including Venus, in addition to Mars, and could even travel beyond our solar system where they could look for extraterrestrial life.
Roscosmos has announced a number of ambitious plans in recent years, including the construction of the first all-Russian space station since Mir left Mir in 2001 and plans for a number of manned and unmanned missions to the moon and even a possible lunar base. Russia’s space program, however, faced two major problems: it lacks sufficient funds to carry out some of its ambitious projects, and the concentration of funds and other resources for arguably questionable purposes – such as the ongoing construction of a 250,000-square-foot office center next to the legendary Chrunichev space rocket factory in Moscow.
Despite a long list of space premieres (including first satellite, first man and woman in space, first space station, first moon and Mars landing, etc.), Russia spent only $ 3.58 billion on its space program in 2020, just 260 million $ More than Japan, and less than France ($ 4.04 billion), China ($ 8.85 billion), and the United States ($ 47.69 billion). These and other factors have left the country that once enjoyed space pioneer status when China’s space agency and NASA show the latest images and footage of their rovers on the surface of Mars.
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