NEI Nuclear Notes

And the winner is…Cassini-Huygens, in triple overtime. The spaceship conceived in 1982 and launched fifteen years later, will crash into Saturn on September 15, after a mission of 19 years and 355 days, powered by the audacity and technical prowess of scientists and engineers from 17 different countries, and 72 pounds of plutonium. The mission was so successful that it was extended three times; it was intended to last only until 2008. Since April, the ship has been continuing to orbit Saturn, swinging through the 1,500-mile gap between the planet and its rings, an area not previously explored. This is a good maneuver for a spaceship nearing the end of its mission, since colliding with a rock could end things early. Cassini will dive a little deeper and plunge toward Saturn’s surface, where it will transmit data until it burns up in the planet’s atmosphere. The radio signal will arrive here early Friday morning, Eastern time. A NASA video explains. In the years since Cassini ...

Did you see the movie The Martian ? The hero, Mark Watney, an astronaut given up for dead by NASA, uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), a sort-of "space battery," to keep warm during his trek across Mars. The movie is science fiction but these devices are real- NASA has been using RTGs to power satellites for nearly forty years , and they've been used on major trips to the moon and other planets. But NASA recently announced plans to use nuclear power in a different way- one that hasn't been fully attempted in fifty years.  The RTGs like Mark Watney’s harness the heat from passive radioactive decay and produce a few hundred watts of electricity, which on Earth would be enough to run a handful of household appliances. But a mission to Mars would require far more power. Now, NASA is working on a reactor that splits atoms, as reactors on Earth do, to make 100 times more electricity than an RTG. The initial plan calls for 40 kilowatts, which on Ear...

The following is a guest post by Richard Rolland, an intern in NEI's Nuclear Generation Division. Richard Rolland Like many of my colleagues in the scientific community, I’m looking forward to viewing pictures of Pluto and its moons from the images taken by the space probe New Horizons  on Tuesday morning. My excitement is enhanced by the knowledge that these pictures are made possible by nuclear power. New Horizons is powered 100% by nuclear power with a radioisotope thermal electric generator. The two most common power sources for space probes today are solar power and RTGs . The benefits of solar power rapidly decrease the further a probe travels away from the Sun.  While radioisotope thermal electric generators (RTGs) function by utilizing the heat created from radioactive decay to produce electricity no matter the location. As we venture further into the depths of interplanetary space, nuclear power provides our space probes with a reliable source of electrici...