Even if NASA and the Department of Energy cannot get plutonium-238 production in full swing by 2021 as planned, there is enough of the nuclear material in the U.S. stockpile to fuel three of the same kind of the nuclear batteries used by the Curiosity rover now exploring Mars, a DOE official told outer planets scientists Feb. 20. One of those batteries, known as a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), is reserved for the Mars 2020 rover: the only nuclear-powered mission NASA has committed to, for now. Based heavily on the design for the 2-year-old Curiosity, Mars 2020 will use a single MMRTG, which requires about 4 kilograms of plutonium-238 to produce 110 watts of electricity. That leaves another two MMRTGs worth of plutonium-238 for some other NASA mission, Alice Caponiti, DOE's director of space and defense power systems, said in a Feb. 20 presentation to the NASA-chartered Outer Planets Assessment Group in Mountain View, California.
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