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Re:Jupiter Awaits Arrival of Juno by raverbashing on Monday June 27, 2016 @05:09AM (#11984973)
Material for RTGs running out is a thing unfortunately
Re:Jupiter Awaits Arrival of Juno by Tepix on Monday June 27, 2016 @05:41AM (#11985052)
According to Wikipedia, the United States restarted production of Plutonium-238 at circa 1.5 kg a year in 2013 after a c. 25-year hiatus.
Re:Jupiter Awaits Arrival of Juno by raverbashing on Monday June 27, 2016 @06:00AM (#11985134)
Good

the Cassini one used 7kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPHS-RTG so I guess it will be some time before new ones are made

Re:Jupiter Awaits Arrival of Juno by dr_zoidberg on Monday June 27, 2016 @10:46AM (#11986458)
They've been exploring smaller designs with better efficiency. Not just because of the shortage, but also because evergy gram counts in a spacecraft...

Well maybe every kilogram, but you got my point. Any savings in mass count, and if you get to cut 1% from the spacecrafts final mass, it can mean a lot in terms of speed and timings for the mission.

Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

The thermophotovoltaic cells look lik a very interesting approach, don't know why they haven't been used yet. With them, Cassini could've used 2 RTGs instead of 3, resulting in a mass saving of 57.5 kg (2% lower dry mass from one less RTG) and some extra power. I do take into account that this technology ws probably not developed enough when Cassini launched.