The goal of the project is to develop and design a high efficiency radioisotope power system for NASA's future planetary exploration missions. For these missions, solar energy is not a viable power option owing to the distance from the sun and the need to use heavy batteries for energy supply at night, making the solar systems for these missions both prohibitively heavy and large.

The grant, "High Efficiency Thermoelectric Radioisotope Power Systems," is a joint effort with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with UNM as the lead organization. Mohamed Shafik El-Genk, UNM Regent's Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies, is the principle investigator of the grant and Theirry Caillat of JPL is the co-principle investigator.

El-Genk said the Segmented Thermoelectric, Radioisotope Power System (STE-RPS) to be developed by the UNM-JPL team, will have twice the efficiency of the current radioisotope thermoelectric generators. The operation lifetime of the system will range from seven to 15 years of continuous generation of power.

"The savings of using the STE-RPS in future missions could be in the tens of millions of dollars in the launch cost alone, depending on the number of missions and the distance of the destination planet from Earth," El-Genk said. "This UNM-JPL space power system will enable many of NASA's future planetary missions."

Some of these missions include the Saturn Rings Observer, the Solar Probe, the Europa Lander, the Cryobot and Hydrobot missions, the Neptune/Titan Orbiter and the Titan Explorer Missions.

"The UNM-JPL system will also have applications in various robotic outposts, planned as part of the Human Exploration and Development of Space Cross-Enterprise, to conduct essential scientific experiments and soil analysis before an eventual human presence on Mars and the Moon," he said.

The specific objectives of the grant are to design and conduct performance analyses of the STE-RPS for meeting electrical power needs of NASA's missions and to develop, fabricate and perform vacuum tests to demonstrate their superior performance of the STE power conversion modules. In addition, an objective is to conduct performance and mass optimization analyses of the advanced STE-RPS with emphasis on achieving the goal of high specific electrical power.

The UNM-JPL research team will include members of the technical staff at JPL and faculty and graduate students from UNM. The UNM-JPL team members will work closely on the various tasks of the material developments, fabrication, and testing of the segmented thermoelectric modules and unicouples in vacuum to simulate space environment, and the design and thermal and analyses of the integrated STE-RPS with a simulated heat source.

El-Genk said the UNM Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies is one of the best academically based research organization in the country in the fields of space nuclear power and propulsion. More than 22 masters and 21 Ph.D. graduates have completed the research requirements of their degrees at the Institute since its founding in 1985.

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