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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 | This article needs more citations. (September 2015) |
| BES-5 reactor | |
|---|---|
 BES-5 type reactor | |
| Generation | Experimental |
| Reactor concept | Unknown |
| Status | ~29 units in Earth orbit |
| Main parameters of the reactor core | |
| Fuel (fissile material) | 235U |
| Fuel state | 37 solid cylinders |
| Neutron energy spectrum | Fast |
| Primary control method | six rods, BC2 with LiH inserts |
| Neutron reflector | Beryllium |
| Primary coolant | NaK |
| Reactor usage | |
| Primary use | US-A satellites |
| Power (thermal) | 100 kW |
| Power (electric) | 1.3–5 kW |
BES-5, also known as Bouk or Buk (Russian: бук, lit. 'beech'), was a Soviet thermoelectric generator that was used to power 31 satellites in the US-A (RORSAT) project. The heat source was a uranium 235 fast fission nuclear reactor (FNR).[citation needed]
Spacecraft nuclear reactors are typically fast reactors for the following reasons. First, normal moderator materials (carbon, water) add bulk and mass which is not desirable in a spacecraft. Second, for reasons of nucleonics, the fuel must be highly enriched to have a lightweight critical mass (similar to small reactor designs on nuclear submarines). Some of the 238
U (which is fertile and not fissile) is converted to 239
Pu during operation, and this is taken into consideration during the design and while estimating the power output and design life expectancy.[citation needed]
The design of the BES-5 FNR is such that a sub-critical assembly exists into which a rod of fissile material is inserted. Feedback and monitoring of the power level will keep the reactor delayed critical and not prompt critical, which can be done by a mechanical control system.[citation needed]
The fuel core of the reactor was 0.24 m (9.4 in) in diameter, 0.67 m (2 ft 2 in) long and weighed, as an assembly, 53 kg (117 lb),[1][2] and contained 35–50 kg (77–110 lb) of enriched uranium. The entire reactor, including the radiation shielding, weighed 385 kg (849 lb).[citation needed]
The uranium fuel was more than 90% enriched 238
U and generated 3 kW of electrical power created by thermoelectric conversion of 100 kW of thermal output.[3][4]
The BES-5 reactor was used in more than 31 satellite missions to power the radar units of the US-A surveillance satellites. The reactor was designed to be boosted to a high orbit at the end of its operational life, to prevent the radioactive fuel from re-entering Earth's atmosphere.[citation needed]
There were several mishaps related to failures in the ejection system, most notably Kosmos 954, which scattered radioactive debris over Canada. Kosmos 1402 also re-entered the atmosphere, but burned up over the Atlantic Ocean, away from populated areas. Kosmos 1900 failed to reach its disposal orbit and remains in low Earth orbit.[citation needed]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Upravlyaemy Sputnik Aktivnyy (Russian: Управляемый Спутник Активный for Controlled Active Satellite), or US-A, also known in the Western world as Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite or RORSAT (GRAU index 17F16K), was a series of 33 Soviet reconnaissance satellites. Launched between 1967 and 1988 to monitor NATO and merchant vessels using radar, the satellites were powered by nuclear reactors. US-A satellites were part of the Legenda satellite system. 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 (a so-called "disposal 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 (six kilowatts) in Kosmos satellites (Kosmos 1818 and Kosmos 1867) which were each capable of operating for six months. 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 (RTGs) 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. One of the last RORSAT follow-ups, called Kosmos 1867, was on 19 July 2025, carried out from the IAAM Foundation tracking stations, coordinated by the Mallorcan astronomer Amado Carbonell Santos, on the island of Mallorca, Spain.
BES-5, also known as Bouk or Buk (Russian: бук, lit. 'beech'), was a Soviet thermoelectric generator that was used to power 31 satellites in the US-A (RORSAT) project. The heat source was a uranium 235 fast fission nuclear reactor (FNR).
Kondor, GRAU index 14F133, is a series of Earth imaging or military reconnaissance satellites developed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya for the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces which in 2015 became the Russian Space Forces and export customers. Satellites for the Russian military are designated "Kondor", whilst those for export are designated Kondor-E. Kondor satellites are equipped to carry either synthetic aperture radar or electro-optical imaging payloads, with the first satellite, and are launched using the Strela carrier rocket, developed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya from retired UR-100NUTTKh missiles. A mass simulator named Gruzomaket (aka Kondor-E-GVM, COSPAR 2003-055A ) was launched on 5 December 2003, and almost ten years later, on 27 June 2013, the first spacecraft was launched. Kondor No.202 (aka Kosmos 2487, Kondor 1, COSPAR 2013-032A) was operated by the Russian military, and carried a radar imaging payload. It was the first radar imaging satellite to be operated by the Russian military after the Soviet RORSAT and Almaz-T series. The first Kondor-E (Kondor-E 1, COSPAR 2014-084A) launched 19 December 2014 for South Africa. Civilian versions of the satellite have been designed under the name Kondor-FKA or Kondor-FKA-M. The launch of the first Kondor-FKA satellite took place on 26 May 2023, while the launch of the second took place on 29 November 2024, both from the Vostochny Cosmodrome.
Kosmos 1818 was a nuclear powered Soviet surveillance satellite in the RORSAT program, which monitored NATO vessels using radar. Kosmos 1818 was the first satellite to use the TOPAZ-1 fission reactor. In July 2008, the satellite was damaged, and leaked a trail of sodium coolant.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
