The TOPAZ 2 Flight Experiment: What We Would Learn

The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), through the New Mexico Alliance (NMA), is procuring several Russian TOPAZ 2 Space Nuclear Reactor Systems for test and evaluation in the United States. BMDO has examined the possibility of conducting a flight test of the TOPAZ 2 reactor. For a variety of reasons including budget pressures and Department of Defense (DoD) refocusing, BMDO has indefinitely deferred flight testing of the TOPAZ 2 reactor. In this paper, the value of flight testing is examined. It is postulated that a flight test mission can advance the understanding of space nuclear reactors in several key areas, including spacecraft system engineering, nuclear reactor system engineering, and spacecraft interaction modeling.