History of the Development of GENSF
Space Nuclear Fission Powers Systems

Major SRS-type satellite development programs were carried out in both the United States and the Soviet Union between 1955 and 1995. The Soviet programs led to the use in orbit, during the period 1967–1988, of more than thirty BES-5-type space-based nuclear power plants for defense missions, followed by in-orbit tests of the TOPAZ I in 1988 and ground-based nuclear tests of the TOPAZ II flight prototype. The power output of these space-based nuclear power plants was in the range of 3–6 kWe. The United States, for its part, after being the first to conduct an in-flight test of a space-based nuclear power plant (a 500-We SNAP-10A model in 1965), focused its development efforts on high-power system technologies: 30 to 50 kWe and 300 kWe with the SNAP-8 and SPAR-50 programs, respectively, from 1959 to 1972, then 100 kWe with the SP-100 project from 1983 to 1994; however, with the exception...