Russian media said that Russia's national space company launched the development of laser orbiting satellites orbit the 'nuclear power station' St. Petersburg Arsenal Design Bureau undertook research work last year, 'Energy' Rocket Aerospace successfully tested the distance of 1.5 km of laser power transmission Technology Experts believe that there is not much prospect for a nuclear power plant in orbit - it is simpler to use solar cells to power the spacecraft.
According to Russia's "Izvestia" website reported on October 30, according to the Russian State Aerospace Corporation's technical mission book, Arsenal Design Bureau should study the feasibility of using laser for spacecraft charging, power should come from nuclear power equipment.
The document states: "In order to determine the design of orbital nuclear power stations and to ensure phased manufacturing, the approval of the development of nuclear power plants with an output of 100 kilowatts to 1,000 kilowatts is to be approved.
R & D units should submit solutions for the shape, main performance, orbit deployment, orbit-in methods and troubleshooting of orbital nuclear power plants by the end of November 2018.
The report said that during the Soviet era negative experience with similar spacecraft had been used, and in 1978 the 'Cosmos-954' satellites carrying nuclear power units crashed into the northwestern part of Canada and the Soviet Union repaid more than a million U.S. dollars for that purpose. The Design Bureau has produced more than 30 spacecraft equipped with nuclear power plants in total and is currently the only company in Russia with relevant experience.
Ivan Moisheyev, head of research at the Russian Institute of Aerospace Policy, believes the orbital nuclear power station has no future because its technology is too complicated to realize and its use is puzzling. "He said that the energy loss between electric energy and laser interconversion is so great that This technology lacks economic justification.
Andrei Jonin, communications fellow at the Ziyolkovsky Academy of Space Sciences in Russia, believes that the study of space laser technology is promising, but the field of application of the orbital nuclear power station is not clear, saying: 'Testing space lasers comes from taking solar energy as a laser The idea of being transported from the satellite to the ground The laser will dissipate in the atmosphere but not in the cosmic vacuum This is a rather interesting project that I have never had before, but I think the two topics of nuclear and laser need to be separated '
For example, Internet investor Yuri Milner and scientist Stephen Hawking introduced a similar project in 2016: Laser-powered satellites at a rate of 160 million kilometers an hour, he said, said space laser technology could be used to launch microsatellites out of the solar system, Speed flight to reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years.
