Our top story this week—about a looming budgetary battle between the White House and Congress over a small slice of federal funding—may seem like much ado about nothing, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The "small slice" in question is the money NASA and the Department of Energy spend each year on radioisotope power systems (RPS), nuclear-fueled devices that provide electricity and heat to spacecraft venturing into the darkest, coldest parts of the solar system. The President's latest budget proposal seeks to wind down spending on RPS, which would effectively end the program within years—and with it, any U.S. capability to send probes to Saturn and beyond.
Built up across several decades, the U.S. RPS pipeline represents billions of dollars of investment in nuclear expertise and infrastructure to ensure the nation can project its might throughout the solar system—and not strictly for science, either. RPS can also be used, for instance, to augment operations of a crewed lunar outpost, or to help support human voyages to Mars. And while the U.S. now ponders turning its back on RPS, others—Europe, Russia, China, and India—are preserving or pursuing their own homegrown programs.
This raises an obvious question: Will ambitious U.S. missions to difficult, distant interplanetary destinations simply fade to black, leaving the high frontier to other nations? One answer—albeit an incorrect one—would be to assert that because NASA is now fast-tracking plans for a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030, there will no longer be need for RPS. But a successful outcome for that plan is far from certain, to say the least, and the significantly different technologies and applications of RPS and of nuclear reactors makes any match-up between the two an apples-to-oranges comparison. Simply put, for NASA to achieve all its objectives—many of which it was given by the Trump administration—the space agency probably needs both RPS and space-ready nuclear reactors.
As of yet, a congressional response to the White House proposal nixing RPS has been muted, with no vociferous, direct statements from appropriators in defense of RPS. But perhaps that will soon change. Stay tuned.
Thoughts? Questions? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), Twitter or Bluesky.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
—Lee Billings
