Upravlyaemy Sputnik Aktivnyy, or US-A, also known in the west as Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite or RORSAT, was a series of Soviet reconnaissance satellites. Launched between 1967 and 1988 to monitor NATO and merchant vessels using radar, the satellites were powered by nuclear reactors. Because a return signal from an ordinary target illuminated by a radar transmitter diminishes as the inverse of the fourth power of the distance, for the surveillance radar to work effectively, US-A satellites had to be placed in low Earth orbit. Had they used large solar panels for power, the orbit would have rapidly decayed due to drag through the upper atmosphere. Further, the satellite would have been useless in the shadow of Earth. Hence the majority of the satellites carried type BES-5 nuclear reactors fuelled by uranium-235. Normally the nuclear reactor cores were ejected into high orbit at the end of the mission, but there were several failure incidents, some of which resulted in radioactive material re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The US-A programme was responsible for orbiting a total of 33 nuclear reactors, 31 of them BES-5 types with a capacity of providing about two kilowatts of power for the radar unit. In addition, in 1987 the Soviets launched two larger TOPAZ nuclear reactors in Kosmos satellites which were each capable of 6 months of operation. The higher-orbiting TOPAZ-containing satellites were the major source of orbital contamination for satellites that sensed gamma-rays for astronomical and security purposes, as radioisotope thermoelectric generators do not generate significant gamma radiation as compared with unshielded satellite fission reactors, and all of the BES-5-containing spacecraft orbited too low to cause positron-pollution in the magnetosphere. The last US-A satellite was launched 14 March 1988.
Incidents
Launch failure, 25 April 1973. Launch failed and the reactor fell into the Pacific Ocean north of Japan. Radiation was detected by US air sampling airplanes.
Kosmos 367, 3 October 1970, failed 110 hours after launch, moved to higher orbit.
Kosmos 1900. The primary system failed to eject the reactor core into storage orbit, but the backup managed to push it into an orbit below its intended altitude.
Other concerns
Although most nuclear cores were successfully ejected into higher orbits, their orbits will still eventually decay. US-A satellites were a major source of space debris in low Earth orbit. The debris is created two ways:
During 16 reactor core ejections, approximately 128 kg of NaK-78 escaped from the primary coolant systems of the BES-5 reactors. The smaller droplets have already decayed/reentered, but larger droplets are still in orbit. Since the metal coolant was exposed to neutron radiation, it contains some radioactive argon-39, with a half-life of 269 years. The risk of surface contamination is low, as the droplets will burn up completely in the upper atmosphere on re-entry and the argon, a chemically inert gas, will dissipate. The major risk is impact with operational satellites.
An additional mechanism is through the impact of space debris hitting intact contained coolant loops. A number of these :Category:Derelict satellites orbiting Earth|old satellites are punctured by orbiting space debris—calculated to be 8 percent over any 50-year period—and release their remaining NaK coolant into space. The coolant self-forms into frozen droplets of solid sodium-potassium of up to around several centimeters in size and these solid objects then become a significant source of space debris themselves.
