INL is assembling the power system for the first NASA drone lander on Saturn’s moon Titan

NASA has selected an idea from a research team from The University of Idaho. The mission called ‘Dragonfly’ is a project to launch a robotic rotorcraftlander to Saturn’s moon Titan.

In a place where the sun doesn’t shine, The Department of Energy is forced to use a power system that can be used in remote locations. For the Dragonfly Mission, they will use a nuclear power system that will be assembled and tested here at the INL.

The multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, better known as MMRTG, is designed and manufactured by a privae industry, then it is sent to the INL, where the power supply is assembled and tested.

“We insert the radioactive fuel that generates heat,” said INL’s department manager for Radioisotopes power systems, Kelly Lively.

The fuel comes in the form of small fueled clads that contain radioactive fuel pellets, plutonium oxide from Los Almos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

“Then we assemble the fueled clads into the general purpose heat sources.”

The general purpose heat sources make up the power system of the MMRTG.

INL receives all of the pieces for the heat sources and then carefully assembles them together at their nuclear facility inside a glove box using remote handling tools since all the pieces are thermally hot.

There are eight general purpose heat sources inside the MMRTG, assembling one of them takes approximately 14 hours to complete.

Once all heat sources are assembled and inserted into the MMRTG, four acceptance tests are run; vibration, properties, magnetic and thermal vacuum.

“The acceptance tests are designed for it to be tested in environments that it will see during its mission.”

The Dragonfly will be the first drone lander over Titans atmosphere, with it NASA will be looking for things that are similar to things on earth.

With Dragonfly, researchers are hoping to answer questions about how the building blocks of life initially formed on earth.