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After a 27-year gap, the U.S. Department of Energy has resumed producing plutonium-238, the radioactive fuel that powers NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond ...

ORNL achieves milestone with plutonium-238 sample. Credit: Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory The irradiated pellets are then dissolved and ORNL staff use a chemical process to ...

In the next two or three years, the U.S. Department of Energy will begin producing small quantities of a material known as plutonium-238 at refurbished federal nuclear facilities in Idaho and ...

The US government says a new robot is poised to help it create a reliable, long-term supply chain of plutonium-238, a radioactive material NASA requires to explore deep space. NASA uses Pu-238 to ...

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has begun producing plutonium-238, but full-scale production of the spacecraft fuel isn't expected until 2023 at the earliest.

Classroom models lie. Our solar system isn't a bunch of bright orbs nestled closely together. Instead, planets and moons are separated from Earth by unfathomable distances — often too remote, dim, and ...

Voyages into space are among the most iconic endeavors of the 20th and 21st centuries. Spacecraft that have ventured out to this “final frontier” have relayed stunning images and enlightening ...

· Plutonium in its pure form is a radioactive material about twice as dense as lead. Essentially all the plutonium on the planet is man-made, created over the last six decades through fissionable ...

Scientists have produced a powder of plutonium-238 for the first time in nearly 30 years in the United States, a milestone that they say sets the country on a path toward powering NASA's deep-space ...

With the production of 50 grams of plutonium-238, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have restored a U.S. capability dormant for nearly 30 years and set the course ...