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Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
D. L. Jassby, S. S. Kalsi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1052-1057
Next-Generation Devices | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22997
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The principal purpose of the FED-R tokamak facility is to provide a substantial quasi-steady flux of fusion neutrons irradiating a large test area in order to carry out thermal, neutronic and radiation effects testing of experimental blanket assemblies. The emphasis on reliable nuclear testing capability demands that the plasma physics characteristics and technological features of the fusion machine be chosen as close to mid-1980s' state of the art as possible, with the important exception that FED-R requires high-duty-factor operation. The outboard nuclear test region is at least 80 em deep with approximately 60 m2 of exposure area. The neutron wall loading is 0.4 MW/m2 in Stage I operation (Qp =1.5) and 1.3 MW/m2 in Stage II (Qp =2.5). Thg toroidal field coils are fabricated of water-cooled copper plates with demountable joints and operate steady state with a power dissipation of 180 MW in Stage I and 280 MW in Stage II.