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Mars rover mission will use pioneering nuclear power source

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01487-6

The radioactive unit will help to deliver Europe’s first Mars rover to the planet’s surface.

Mars rover mission will use pioneering nuclear power source

Can I ask how everyone personally feels about using nuclear material for space exploration? For the rovers heating elements it will be just a couple of grams but for generating electricity via a RTG a spacecraft would require several kilograms of radioactive material.

3 comments

evidences

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It's fine, both of the last two US Rovers are powered off RTGs and several of the deep space probes run off RTGs also. For low Earth orbit and stuff closer to the sun it doesn't make sense but going further out and especially in a place like Mars where solar panels are prone to being covered in dust an RTG power source makes sense.

mipadaitu

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Exactly, for its intended use, it's really the best option we have.

Kangie

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Don't worry too much about it: it's not the 80s and we're not the Soviets.

Once it's in orbit it doesn't matter and if there's issues during ascent the source will be hardened to prevent catastrophic release.

Realistically though, just send it up on a falcon 9, the track record on those things is _ astounding_.