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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.
W.S. Shih, W.J. James, N.E. Barr, N.C. Morosoff, Y. Xie, R.B. Stephens
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 31 | Number 4 | July 1997 | Pages 442-448
Technical Paper | Eleventh Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST97-A30799
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma deposition techniques have been examined for production of air-stable films consisting principally of beryllium and carbon. By plasma polymerization of diethylberyllium, films have been made with Be content above 50%, O content near 1%, excellent composition uniformity and reasonable surface smoothness. It appears necessary, for oxygen stability, to deposit these films at T>250°C; at that temperature, the Be is incorporated, at least in part, as a carbide; the measured film densities—2.1–2.5 g/cm3, are near that of Be2C. Permeability to H2 is sufficent to allow microballon filling at 105°C without subsequent loss of H2 at room temperature. Combined sputtering of Be and deposition of a methane plasma polymer has been found similarly effective in forming beryllium/carbon films with Be content above 50 at. % and O content near 1%. These films have not been as extensively studied.