Science
NASA’s Perseverance rover is the 1st spacecraft in years to carry fresh US plutonium. It won’t be the last. – Space.com
If you want to explore the outer solar system, you need plutonium.
Deep inside some of NASA’s most venerable space probes lie plutonium-filled hearts beating to warm and power the robots, which include the twin Voyager spacecraft
, Cassini before its daring plunge through Saturn’s rings and New Horizons
trekking through the rubble of the Kuiper Belt.
But in the wake of the Cold War, the U.S. stopped producing its own plutonium. For a while, NASA could run its missions solely off existing or imported plutonium. But thanks to a change in the space agency’s partnership…
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