The quickest way to recognize how rad Earth is, is to leave it. Every time we send a spacecraft into space, we have to send it with everything it will ever need riding on its back or in its belly.

After a 27-year gap, the U.S. Department of Energy has resumed producing plutonium-238, the radioactive fuel that powers NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond ...

Voyages into space are among the most iconic endeavors of the 20th and 21st centuries. Spacecraft that have ventured out to this “final frontier” have relayed stunning images and enlightening ...

NASA’s worries about running out of plutonium by the middle of the next decade are premature, according to a senior U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) official. The U.S. space agency has three missions ...

WASHINGTON — Ever since 2013, when NASA shelved development of a new plutonium battery four times more efficient than those used today, the agency has been forced to come up with creative solutions ...

I recall a Poul Anderson science fiction novel with teleportation being one of its’ premises and one of the plot points was the main station was on the Moon because you could teleport millions of tons ...

Most places in the solar system can't be reached without nuclear energy. NASA uses plutonium-238 forged during the Cold War to power its most ambitious missions. NASA is running low on the material, ...

The United States has begun manufacturing nuclear spacecraft fuel for the first time in a generation, but full production of the stuff is still seven years or so away. In December, officials at the ...

The US government says a new robot is poised to help it create a reliable, long-term supply chain of plutonium-238, a radioactive material NASA requires to explore deep space. NASA uses Pu-238 to ...