MOSCOW. Sept 16 (Interfax) - Roscosmos is planning to test a mockup engine for a nuclear-powered space tug over the next six months, the state procurement website said.
The state corporation is working on a Forsazh research and development project aimed at researching "technologies for creating rocket engines, propulsion and power units for prospective space-rocket hardware products," according to the website.
The next stage of research and development has been allocated 525 million rubles. Also, by March 30, 2020, the contractor is to obtain an "experimental confirmation of the operating capability of the mockup magnetoplasmadynamic rotary engine" and prepare "proposals on the design of an electric-rocket propulsion unit with a magnetoplasmadynamic rotary engine as part of a nuclear-power propulsion unit for an inter-orbital tug."
The results of this work will be used to "develop prospective nuclear-power propulsion units with an electrical capacity of 100 to 1,000 kilowatts."
The development of the megawatt-class nuclear-power propulsion unit began in 2010. The plan is to use it on an orbital tug for Moon and deep space exploration. The development is carried out by the Keldysh Center. The initial deadlines for the tug's completion and first flight set for 2015 and 2018 have been moved several times.
In January 2019 the Khrunichev Center announced the creation of a power unit and testing of a turbine generator for "a space-based nuclear power plant."
In 2015 media reported that this work was discontinued, but Roscosmos denied that. Under initial plans, the first flight of a module with a nuclear propulsion unit was due in 2018. In 2016, the head of TsNIImash (Central Research Institute of Machine Building), Oleg Gorshkov, said that the module prototype would not be ready before 2022-2023.
It was also reported that the development of the propulsion unit and module would cost at least 17 billion rubles.
Nuclear power has already been used in space: between 1970-1988 the Soviet Union launched 32 spacecraft with a thermoelectric nuclear-power propulsion unit, and between 1960-1980 a nuclear rocket engine was developed and tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.