Historical RTG performance data through 2020
Authors/Creators
- 1. University of Dayton
- 2. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Description
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).
Notes
Data is tabulated in a standard Excel spreadsheet with standard formatting. Some important contextual information is also provided in the table, but complete context and appreciation for the data requires information that can be found in Chapter 8 of the book, The Technology of Discovery: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators and Thermoelectric Technologies for Space Exploration (ISBN: 9781119811367).
Pedegree of the data presented in the data set can be found in the previously cited book and in the Methods section of this dataset.
The authors collected and curated this data on their own time and are making the numerical format freely available to all (i.e. no copyright). We only ask that any publication, report, or presentation that uses any values from this data set actively reference the previously cited book.
For example: C.E. Whiting and D.F. Woerner, "Chapter 8: Lifetime Performance of Spaceborne RTGs," The Technology of Discovery: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators and Thermoelectric Technologies for Space Exploration, D.F. Woerner, Ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2023. ISBN: 9781119811367
Files
README.md
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