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...

Here at NEI, we like to keep an ear to the ground when it comes to what's being discussed on Twitter and make sure to respond if/when folks direct reasonable questions our way. Earlier this afternoon, Baltimore resident Dan Ewald posed the following question to us via Twitter: "Y'all doing anything to help with the impending Plutonium-238 problem for @NASA? Dan very helpfully included a link to a story from Wired describing the problem . To get an answer, I turned to Leslie Barbour of NEI: We have long supported the DOE program for space exploration in appropriations, especially Cassini. The funding has always been provided by the Office of Nuclear Energy until this year when DOE and NASA agreed that space reactor funding be included in NASA budget. We can look at this again if needed. For more information on how NASA spacecraft utilize radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for the power they need, see our website .

“If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space, well, there’s a one-ton, automobile-size piece of American ingenuity, and it’s sitting on the surface of Mars right now.” This statement came from John Holdren , President Obama’s science advisor, this morning following the landing of a 2,000-pound nuclear-powered space rover, Curiosity , on the surface of Mars. This marks the first time that NASA has ever safely landed a human-made object of this size and weight on the surface of Mars, a notable feat in American engineering. Early reports from The New York Times describes the rover’s landing on the Red Planet like a scene in a movie script: As the drama of the landing unfolded, each step proceeded without flaw. The capsule entered the atmosphere at the appointed time, with thrusters guiding it toward the crater. The parachute deployed. Then the rover and rocket stage dropped away from the parachute and began a powered descent toward the surfac...

I know we talk a lot about electricity generation here at NEI Nuclear Notes , but it's important to remember that there are plenty of other peaceful uses of nuclear technology that deserve some attention. Over at Wired , they're looking at how companies building space probes are beginning to push for new developments in nuclear propulsion . For more on nuclear propulsion in space travel, click here .