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Main engine start, one, zero and lift off.
pressure in the main engine
BOB CARPENTER: If a U.S. citizen wants the U.S. to stay in a world leadership role in
space exploration, you have to have radioisotope power systems.
(Music plays.)
JAMES GREEN: On November 25th a window opens, and it allows us to launch the Mars Science
Laboratory. Now, that particular mission will land a rover called Curiosity on the surface
of Mars. It uses radioisotope power because it has to – has to be able to operate through
the winter, could potentially operate through the night, and it goes into the regions where
there are low-sunlight conditions. And so it therefore needs its power supply to operate.
RYAN BECHTEL: A radioisotope power system is a kind of nuclear power system which uses
a natural decay heat of a radioisotope – or in this case, plutonium-238 – to generate
electricity, which can be used by spacecraft.
MR. GREEN: That’s important because it enables us then to run experiments, charge batteries,
survive the night. We can use the heat from these systems to keep everything at a particular
temperature that allows it to survive. And because of that, that enables certain missions
that we could have never done using traditional solar power.
MR. BECHTEL: The first nuclear-powered satellite was launched in 1961. It was the Navy’s
Transit 4A satellite. It was used by the Navy as a predecessor to today’s Global Positioning
Systems (sic) satellite network. They were first developed under the Atoms for Peace
Initiative under President Eisenhower.
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER: First, encourage world-wide investigation into the most effective peacetime
uses of fissionable material.
MR. BECHTEL: And the first public introduction to a radioisotope thermoelectric generator
was in President’s Eisenhower’s Oval Office. Since then we’ve launched over 27 missions
using nuclear power systems in outer space.
So then NASA began using RTGs to enable their deep space exploration for about a decade.
And during this time there were some changes back here on Earth. The Energy Research Development
Agency became the Department of Energy. And since then the Department of Energy, with
NASA, have teamed up to produce long-lasting, reliable power systems for deep space exploration.
MR. CARPENTER: We’ve had generators on the moon.
MR. BECHTEL: They’ve done flybys of Venus, Uranus and Neptune.
MR. GREEN: The Galileo mission to Jupiter –
MR. CARPENTER: We’re currently orbiting Saturn with the Cassini spacecraft. New Horizons
going to Pluto – supposed to arrive there about 2015.
MR. GREEN: And then there’s the Voyagers 1 and 2.
MR. BECHTEL: The Voyager space probes launched in 1977 are still operating today because
of their radioisotope thermoelectric generators. The space probes are over 11 billion miles
from Earth – are entering the very fringes of our solar system.
MR. GREEN: As we look at these objects and study them, we really determine that there
are places in the solar system where life might actually exist well beyond the boundaries
of our Earth.
MR. BECHTEL: Radioisotope power systems enable our understanding of the outer solar system.
MR. CARPTENTER: It’s just not imaginable how little of space around us we’ve explored.
MR. GREEN: There’s just a continual array of ideas and concepts – many of which have
been delineated in our strategic plan – that we would like to see executed over the next
10 years. And it can only be done if we have radioisotope power.