Historical RTG performance data through 2020

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) are the only technology capable of providing reliable and consistent electrical power for decades while isolated in extreme environments. RTGs have been, and will continue to be, a critical enabling component in some of humankind's most impressive feats of space exploration in the past (e.g. Cassini), present (e.g. Voyager), and future (e.g. Dragonfly). Power produced by an RTG will slowly decrease over time due to decay of the radioisotope fuel and degradation of the materials within the generator. With over 60 years of history, the technology of RTGs has evolved from producing only a few electrical watts (e.g. SNAP-3B ~3 W) to nearing a kilowatt of total mission power (e.g. Cassini beginning-of-mission 887 W). They also evolved from systems that were only designed to last a few years, into systems that are now exploring interstellar space 45 years after launch. Obviously, understanding how the performance of these systems changes over their lifetime is of very high interest to anyone planning a future space exploration mission. This dataset presents all of the power and performance information that is available for all spaceborne RTGs that have been flown by NASA and the US Department of Defense through early 2020. Some performance data that has not previously been published is also provided here, including the full lifetime for Galileo and Pioneer 11, as well as a near complete lifetime for Pioneer 10. While all of the available performance data for RTGs is presented here, it should be noted that the context of each mission and RTG design is extremely important in understanding RTG behavior. It is not possible to provide enough context to fully appreciate the behavior of all 29 RTG space missions in a dataset publication, so users are highly encouraged to find the appropriate context in Chapter 8 of the book, The Technology of Discovery: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators and Thermoelectric Technologies for Space Exploration (ISBN: 9781119811367).

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

该数据集汇总了截至2020年初NASA和美国国防部所有空间放射性同位素热电发电机（RTG）的历史性能数据，包括功率输出和退化信息，覆盖了从早期SNAP-3B到现代任务如卡西尼号等29次空间任务。数据集以Excel表格形式提供，补充了之前未发布的伽利略号、先驱者11号和先驱者10号等任务的完整寿命数据，但用户需参考相关书籍以获取完整上下文来充分理解数据。