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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 14 2019, @02:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the glowing-idea dept.

NASA's deep-space nuclear-power crisis may soon end, thanks to a clever new robot in Tennessee

The US government says a new robot is poised to help it create a reliable, long-term supply chain of plutonium-238 (Pu-238): a radioactive material NASA requires to explore deep space.

NASA uses Pu-238 to power its most epic space missions— among them New Horizons (now beyond Pluto), the Voyagers (now in interstellar space), and Cassini (now part of Saturn).

[...] NASA tried to address the shrinking of its supply in the 1990s, but the agency and its partners didn't secure funding to create a new pipeline for Pu-238 until 2012. That work, which gets about $20 million in funding per year, is finally starting to move from the research phase toward full-scale production. By 2025, the Department of Energy hopes to meet the NASA-mandated need of 3.3 pounds (1,500 grams) per year.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is located in Tennessee and leading the work, says it recently proved there is a way to produce eight times as much Pu-238 as it made just a couple of years ago, thanks to a new automated robot. [...] This week, the lab said in a press release that it's ready to push annual production to more than 14 ounces (400 grams) per year, an eight-fold increase.

Cassini carried 33 kilograms of plutonium. New Horizons had 9,750 grams (lower than the 10,900 grams, 1/3 of the Cassini amount, called for in the original design).

It's time to send a probe to Uranus and Neptune already.

Previously: US Resumes Making Pu-238 after Decades Long Hiatus
NASA Unlikely to Have Enough Plutonium-238 for Missions by the Mid-2020s


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 14 2019, @07:05PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 14 2019, @07:05PM (#786569) Journal

    I think the moon Miranda [wikipedia.org] might be a good candidate to visit as part of any mission to Uranus.

    Please end that stupid joke once and for all. It's pronounced: URINE-us, with the emphasis on the first pair of syllables.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 14 2019, @07:11PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday January 14 2019, @07:11PM (#786574) Journal

    All of Uranus's five largest moons are great targets. Some of them could have underground liquid oceans. Neptune only has one large moon, Triton, although that is an interesting target that could have an underground ocean and is considered to be an example of a captured Kuiper belt object. Triton is also larger than Pluto and Eris.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:06AM (2 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:06AM (#786812) Journal

    Technically "OO-ran-ous" if we're going back to the proper Greek (Ouranos/the heavens). Which is weird, given all the other names are Roman. You'd think it'd be "Caelestus" or something.

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    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:49PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:49PM (#786905) Journal

      That is informative. I'm going by how I have heard astronomers pronounce it on cable tv documentary programs back when I suffered from cable tv.

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    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @03:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @03:04PM (#786912)

      Cælus [wikipedia.org] was the name of the Roman sky god that they associated with Uranus/Ouranos in the same way they associated Aphrodite with Venus, Ares with Mars, Zeus with Jupiter, and so on.