Despite protests around the world, the Cassini space probe—containing more deadly plutonium than had ever been used on a space device—was launched 20 years ago. And this past weekend—on Earth Day—the probe and its plutonium were sent crashing into Saturn. The $3.27 billion mission constituted a huge risk. Cassini with its 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 […]
What NASA insisted for decades could not bea spacecraft using solar energy rather than nuclear power going beyond the orbit of Marswill be proven false next Monday, July 4th, Independence Day, when the solar-energized Juno space probe arrives at Jupiter. NASA had maintained that to provide on-board power and heat on spacecraft in deep space, […]
NASA has released a study claiming there is a need for continued use of plutonium-energized power systems for future space flights. It also says the use of actual nuclear reactors in space “has promise” but “currently” there is no need for them. The space plutonium systems—called radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGS)—use the heat from the decay […]
The recent crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and explosion on launch three days earlier of an Antares rocket further underline the dangers of inserting nuclear material in the always perilous space flight equation—as the U.S. and Russia still plan. “SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly,” Virgin Galactic tweeted after the spacecraft, on which $500 million […]