NASA Doesn't Have Enough Nuclear Fuel For Its Deep Space Missions
“The biggest problem is that we have big dreams of exploring the Universe. We want to send a mission to not only Europa but Enceladus and Triton to investigate the possibility of life in their subsurface oceans. We want to fly a dedicated mission to Uranus and Neptune, which have never yet had one. We have dreams of exploring numerous worlds in the Kuiper belt. We want to send a probe to Sedna, and discover what an object that may have originated from our Oort cloud looks like.
But without the ability to power these missions, it will never happen. Solar panels, batteries, and chemical-based fuels simply won't get the job done. If we want these missions to function optimally, we need to equip them with an RTG. In terms of safety, efficiency, weight, power output, and design optimization, Pu-238 has no equal.”
One of the primary ways we learn about the Universe is by going to the location we want to explore with the right instruments, and collecting the measurements and data we need from on-site. This is true not only here on Earth, but on and around distant worlds far beyond. Whether we’re going to Mars, the gas giants, the Kuiper belt, a moon, asteroid, or comet, there’s no substitute for actually going there and determining, firsthand, what’s going on.
But that takes power, and at those incredible distances from the Sun, solar power, batteries, and chemical-based fuels are all extremely limited. The best resource to use? Radioactive plutonium, and Pu-238 in particular. Yet we stopped producing it in large quantities back in 1988, and our space program has never been the same.
If you care about deep space missions, you should care that our NIMBY fears of nuclear are costing NASA more knowledge than money could ever buy. Here’s the scoop.