We have succesfully passed through Dingo Gap, and this NavCam image shows the rearward view, where we have driven over the dune.<\/p>\n
Its is also a great view of the the Multi Mission Radio Isotope Thermal Generator (RTG) with its cooling fins on Curiosity.\u00a0\u00a0When designing Curiosity, the Engineers decided that an RTG would provide more consistent power than solar panels and would therefore allow the rover to drive faster, further and do more scientific measurements.\u00a0\u00a0Our RTG is powered by the\u00a0decay of Plutonium-238.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since about the 1960s, energy from nuclear decay\u00a0has been\u00a0used to\u00a0power spacecraft. RTGs use the thermal energy generated from alpha decay to generate a temperature difference across hundreds of thermocouples.\u00a0 As most of the power is dissipated as heat it\u00a0allows us to maintain Curiosity at a working temperature, in addition to providing about 100 W electrical power.<\/p>\n
Thermoelectric conversion has a relatively low efficiency, but requires no moving parts, which is a major advantage for\u00a0Curiosity because we have to\u00a0operate for many years without maintenance. Most of the NASA RTGs that have been flown on missions have hugely exceeded their original design life.\u00a0 Probably the most impressive examples are the Voyager probes, whose RTGs are still producing enough power (at the time of writing) for them to return valuable scientific data over 35 years after they were launched!\u00a0 They are the most distant man-made vehicles.<\/p>\n
One of the other things you can see on this image is the ‘billy can’ in the top left, that covers the UHF transmiter.\u00a0 One of the few signs of damage on landing was\u00a0the slight dent\u00a0on this outer casing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have succesfully passed through Dingo Gap, and this NavCam image shows the rearward view, where we have driven over the dune. Its is also a great view of the the Multi Mission Radio Isotope Thermal Generator (RTG) with its cooling fins on Curiosity.\u00a0\u00a0When designing Curiosity, the Engineers decided that an RTG would provide more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}