It used to be the case that if you wanted to send a spacecraft mission out past the asteroid belt, you?d need a chunk of plutonium-238 to generate electric power ? like for Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, even Ulysses which just did a big loop out and back to get a new angle on the Sun ? and now New Horizons on its way to Pluto.
But in 2011, the Juno mission to Jupiter is scheduled for launch – the first outer planet exploration mission to be powered by solar panels. And also scheduled for 2011, in another break with tradition ? Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory will be the first Mars rover to be powered by a plutonium-238 radioisotope thermoelectric generator – or RTG.
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Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Solar Or RTG? (544 words)
© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Curiosity, Juno mission, RTGs
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Full story at http://www.universetoday.com/74755/astronomy-without-a-telescope-solar-or-rtg/
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