|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Meet The Nuclear-Powered Self-Driving Drone NASA Is Sending To A MoonOf Saturn
"On the face of it, NASA's newest probe sounds incredible. Known as Dragonfly, it
is a dual-rotor quadcopter (technically an octocopter, even more technically an X8 octocopter); it's roughly the size of a compact car; it's completely autonomous; it's nuclear powered; and it will hover above the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. But Elizabeth Turtle, the mission's principle investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, insists that this is actually a pretty tame space probe, as these things go. "There's not a lot of new technology," she says. Quadcopters (even X8 octocopters) are for sale on Amazon these days. Self-driving technology is coming along quickly. Nuclear power is harder to come by, but the team plans to use the same kind of system that runs NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. Everything that's going into Dragonfly is already being used somewhere else. Which is not to say that the idea of a nuclear-powered drone flying around a moon of Saturn doesn't sound kind of crazy." See: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/76064...moon-of-saturn |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
39 days to Mars possible now with nuclear-powered VASIMR. | Thomas Koenig | Astronomy Misc | 4 | November 8th 15 02:36 PM |
Russian nuclear-powered SSTO vehicle | Pat Flannery | History | 9 | February 27th 11 10:21 PM |
So sending people in space craft with ion thrusters or nuclear propulsionto Mars has side effect? | kelvin | Space Shuttle | 5 | November 17th 05 02:23 AM |
Nuclear powered airliners | Robert Lynn | Policy | 54 | October 18th 05 12:21 AM |
What we need is a nuclear powered moon rover | bob haller | Space Shuttle | 0 | April 4th 04 09:20 PM |