Output on arrival on Mars, 110 watts, isn’t much on earth it would be about enough to run two laptop computers. Perseverance will carry a wide variety of scientific instruments, all requiring electricity, which will be supplied by the plutonium power pack. They use a short-lived form of Plutonium, created by reactors at the Department of Energy. These generators do not split atoms the way that earth-bound reactors do they make electricity from the heat given off through radioactive decay. The Perseverance’s nuclear energy pack is designed for a 14-year life.Įndurance and Curiosity use the plutonium in a device called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Curiosity arrived on Mars in August 2012, and is still operating on the surface, although it was intended to run only two years. Perseverance’s overall size is about the same size as an earlier nuclear-powered rover, Curiosity, but has a lot more on board, and weighs about 2.1 tons, nearly 15 percent more than its predecessor.
#Nuclear time mars generator
NASA and the Department of Energy are already working on a reactor for that purpose.įor now, though, the nuclear electric generator will power the rover itself. Making materials on Mars itself to sustain human life, or to provide fuel for the return trip, vastly reduces the amount of material that would have to be sent there from Earth all of that work requires large amounts of energy, which a nuclear system can provide. Perseverance will also experiment with producing oxygen on the surface, for use by human astronauts to follow, and who would need air and other supplies for a stay of weeks or months. Scientists say that if it finds evidence, the most likely would be ancient microbes, but even that would be a major scientific achievement. Once on Mars, the rover will look for telltale chemical and geological clues about life. It will carry a nuclear electric generator, which will power its electric drive motors, radios, cameras, lasers and other chemistry lab equipment, and a drill to penetrate the surface. Nuclear energy powers the increasingly sophisticated rovers that NASA sends to Mars.ĭespite the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA says it is on track to meet the schedule dictated by the dance of the planets, and launch its new rover Perseverance sometime between July 30 and August 11. You may recognize nuclear energy as the workhorse of the electric grid, but innovation has made the technology essential for tasks well beyond electricity generation – and beyond our planet, too.
If there was ever life on Mars, nuclear technology will help find it.
0 kommentar(er)
