The U.S. Has A Nuclear Reactor Orbiting in Space

Exactly half a century ago this week, a rocket shot off from the California coast. It carried the U.S.’s first and only (known) space nuclear reactor, SNAP-10A, which has been circling the Earth ever since and will continue to circle for another 3,000 years.

Back in the 1960s, NASA ran a Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) program to study nuclear power’s potential in space exploration. This program sent up the first radioisotope thermoelectric generators, a technology still used in space probes like Voyager and Curiosity today. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators aren’t nuclear reactors, though. They simply harness the heat from a decaying element, such as plutonium-238.

SNAP 10-A was different. SNAP 1o-A was actually a functioning reactor with a controlled fission reaction inside. It contained enough uranium fuel to produce up to 600 watts of power for a year. Twelve hours after take off on April 3, 1965, it settled into orbit 500 kilometers above Earth and humans back on the ground remotely switched on the reactor.

At first, things went well. But 43 days into the mission, electrical systems on the satellite carrying it failed, and the reactor shut down. It’s still up there orbiting. Given its current trajectory, NASA expects it to stay in orbit for another 3,000 years.

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