Because of the shortage of plutonium fuel and weak sunlight in our outer solar system, NASA’s plan to fly spacecraft beyond Jupiter to investigate the outer planets’ origins and potential for life may be endangered.
Two Oak Ridge engineers and former presidents of Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a proposal for saving the NASA plan. They first described their technical solution at the winter meeting last November of the American Nuclear Society.
At the Friends of ORNL meeting at noon Tuesday, Feb. 10, they will give an updated presentation on their device concept and its background for the public at the UT Resource Center, 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike. The title of the free talk by John E. Gunning and Robert G. Kennedy III is “Beta-VOR: An Economical Betavoltaic Electrical Power Source for Deep Space Missions.”…