Nuclear Powered Mission to Jovian Moons

Skyshadow writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about NASA's new project, the JIMO (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter). The probe is designed specifically to search for liquid water and signs of life on Europa, as well as making detailed observations of Callisto and Ganymede. Planned for a 2010 liftoff, this new probe makes all previous interplanetary probes look wussy: it'll be 300 feet long and powered by a next-gen fission reactor (as opposed to nuclear batteries). Sure beats blowing money circling the earth over and over again..."

Comments

The just *can't* send this without a lander...

[Skyshadow]

If you're going to go to all the trouble to send a gigantic (length of a football field) probe all the way to Jupiter, I don't know how you could even consider doing so without sending a lander to get a up-close look at Europa. It'd be like Columbus sailing all the way to the new world and not getting off the ship...

I wonder, specifically, what instruments this thing'll have that will require their own little nuke plant as opposed to batteries. Articles were a bit sketchy on the details...

Environmentalisim

[Glendale2x]

I'm saddened by the fact that this thing will probably come under some extreme environmental protest simply because it contains the words "nuclear" or "reactor".

Not to mention that the reactor is probably sturdy enough to survive an liftoff abort destruct, or falling back to Earth. These things aren't engineered to be large radation hazards.

Besides, nuclear material goes up on a lot of spacecraft and the world hasn't ended yet.