this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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I mean, we could do it again. There's kind of no reason not to, we could put more advanced instruments on them, we could send larger probes with more instruments, more experiments longer lived power sources...
Well, I said there's no reason, but actually there are a few reasons we aren't doing it currently. First, everything costs money, NASA's budget keeps getting cut, and we have other important missions already planned. I certainly don't want any new projects to jeopardise missions like dragonfly for instance. Also, we're running out of available nuclear fuels... I believe the Voyager probes used plutonium 238 for their RTGs, but we have these nuclear proliferation treaties with Russia and long story short, we haven't been making that stuff for the last 70 years and there's not much left.