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India Mulls Using Nuclear Power For Its Chandrayaan-2 Mission To the Moon
MarkWhittington writes: India is preparing its second mission to the moon, the Chandrayaan-2, as Space Insider noted. The mission will consist or an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. It will be launched on an Indian-built Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in late 2017 or early 2018. Defense Daily reported that officials at the Indian Space Research Organization are mulling making the lunar mission nuclear powered, presumably with plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). RTGs use the heat of the decaying fuel to create electricity. Both the American and the Soviet space programs have used RTGs in their various spacecraft, the most recent one being the New Horizons space probe that recently flew past Pluto.
It's cheaper to use a regular casing. We'll have to rely on the cost/safety trade-off made by a poor country.
The Sun isn't visible on any given point on the Lunar surface for two weeks every month and it gets cold at "night". An RTG-powered lander and rover can stay operational in such circumstances and the excess heat from the RTG can stop the electronics, motors, batteries etc. from freezing up and failing. The solar-only solution would require lots and lots of PV panels plus enough battery storage to, at the minimum, warm the lander/rover and prevent damage to the instruments and systems. That's a lot of extra mass to carry compared to a small RTG that can provide power and heat.