Whats in an RTG?
The Galileo mission will be the 24th U.S. space mission since 1961 to be powered partially or totally by nuclear power sources. These missions, for both the U.S. military and NASA, have included Earth-orbiting weather, communications, and navigational satellites, as well as the Apollo, Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager space programs. The Soviet Union uses nuclear-powered spacecraft as well. The Galileo orbiter will carry two 285 Watt (electrical) General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) while approximately 112 one Watt (thermal) Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) will warm scientific instruments onboard both the orbiter and the probe. An RTG basically consists of two parts: a source of heat and a system for converting the heat to electricity. The heat source contains a radioisotope, such as Plutonium-238, that becomes physically hot from its own radioactivity decay.
The Galileo mission will be the 24th U.S. space mission since 1961 to be powered partially or totally by nuclear power sources. These missions, for both the U.S. military and NASA, have included Earth-orbiting weather, communications, and navigational satellites, as well as the Apollo, Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager space programs. The Soviet Union uses nuclear-powered spacecraft as well. The Galileo orbiter will carry two 285 Watt (electrical) General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) while approximately 112 one Watt (thermal) Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) will warm scientific instruments onboard both the orbiter and the probe. An RTG basically consists of two parts: a source of heat and a system for converting the heat to electricity. The heat source contains a radioisotope, such as Plutonium-238, that becomes physically hot from its own radioactivity decay. This heat is converted to electricity by a thermoelectric converter which uses the Seeb
