Fuel for deep space exploration running on empty

WASHINGTON

Deep space probes beyond Jupiter can’t use solar power because they’re too far from the sun. So they rely on a certain type of plutonium, plutonium-238. It powers these spacecraft with the heat of its natural decay. But plutonium-238 isn’t found in nature; it’s a byproduct of nuclear weaponry.

The United States stopped making it about 20 years ago and NASA has been relying on the Russians. But now the Russian supply is running dry because they stopped making it, too.

…The National Academy report says it would cost the Energy Department at least $150 million to resume making it for the 11 pounds a year that NASA needs for its space probes.

Without that material “a lot of things will be shut down and they will stay shut down for a long time,” McNutt said.

AP