TMK-MAVR

Mission Profile

TMK-MAVR (Tyazhelyy Mezhplanetnyy Korabl-Mars, or Heavy Interplanetary Ship for Mars) was a Soviet conceptual design from the early 1960s for an enormous crewed Mars flyby or landing spacecraft, studied by Korolev's design bureau as the ultimate objective of Soviet space exploration beyond the Moon. The vehicle would have been assembled in orbit from multiple Proton or N1 launches and used nuclear thermal propulsion for the interplanetary trajectory, with preliminary design studies suggesting a launch mass of hundreds of tonnes. TMK-MAVR remained a paper study as the Soviet space program was redirected toward more immediately achievable goals, and the technical challenges of the nuclear propulsion system and orbital assembly proved insurmountable with 1960s technology.