(updated below)
On January 19, 2006 NASA successfully launched the New Horizons spacecraft on a mission to Pluto. It will fly by the ninth planet on July 14, 2015 before proceeding into the Kuiper Belt.
New Horizons is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) fueled by plutonium-238. The natural heat of decay of the plutonium-238 fuel is converted to about 200 watts of electricity by means of thermoelectric cells.
“Since 1961, the United States has successfully flown 41 radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and one reactor to provide power for 24 space systems,” reported Gary L. Bennett in a newly updated history of space nuclear power (pdf).
“The development and use of nuclear power in space has enabled the human race to extend its vision into regions that would not have been possible with non-nuclear power sources,” wrote Bennett, a former Energy Department and NASA official who devoted much of his career to the development of space nuclear power sources.
See “Space Nuclear Power: Opening the Final Frontier” by Gary L. Bennett, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics paper number AIAA-2006-4191, presented at the 4th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, June 2006 (posted with the author’s permission).
Update: And see, relatedly, “Mission of Daring: The General-Purpose Heat Source Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator” (pdf) by Gary L. Bennett and James J. Lombardo, et al, (AIAA-2006-4096, also presented at the 4th IECEC, June 2006.
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.
Fourteen teams from ten U.S. states have been selected as the Stage 2 awardees in the Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC), a national competition that helps communities turn emerging research into ready-to-implement solutions.
The Fix Our Forests Act provides an opportunity to speed up the planning and implementation of wildfire risk reduction projects on federal lands while expanding collaborative tools to bring more partners into this vital work.
Public health insurance programs, especially Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), are more likely to cover populations at increased risk from extreme heat, including low-income individuals, people with chronic illnesses, older adults, disabled adults, and children.