This is great news. My understanding from when I worked at JPL was thst NASA only had enough plutonium for about one more large RTG for the Mars 2020 mission (to power Curiosity 2.0). While RTGs are essential for deep space missions, they are also useful for closer destinations.
Hate to be a negative nancy...<p>..But we're making a fuss about restarting the production of something we'd already mastered, and we first made in 1941?<p>I'll be more interested when an American commercial breeder reactor comes online.
Url changed from <a href="http://www.livescience.com/53227-plutonium-238-created-for-space-fuel.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.livescience.com/53227-plutonium-238-created-for-s...</a>, which is cribbed from this press release. Like most of the science PR mills, that one does not link to its sources.