Why are solar panels used instead of RTGs on Mars rovers? The radioactive stuff that would be released after millennia of erosion delt to the rover from blowing dust and sand on Mars?

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I can't answer why the didn't this time, but they are considering it next time.

I actually thought they'd already made this choice... Guess not.

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Launching RTGs cause a lot of yelling and screaming (as with Cassini and Galileo) that NASA would like to avoid. Launching RTGs also requires approval from the White House.

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Hmmm. Sounds good. I mean we can go and pick them up long before they wear open. Being able to work at night would be a boon to. How many years would the power last for the rover? The Voyagers will have power for about 17-20 more years if I'm remembering right. What if the rover used brushless motors, it could run for decades couldn't it? And charge certain parts so Martian dust doesn't stick and cause wear.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Ah, have to love those nuke fearing woo woos.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Also, RTG's are expensive. Each adds about $50 million to the cost of the mission, so NASA uses them only when it absolutely has to.

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JPL has a developed RTG they called a "Powerstick". Lewis Research Center had hoped to use them for a proposed "Project Pascal" that would have distributed several landers over Mars to make weather measurements to be relayed to an orbiter and then to earth. I studied it and seem to remember that it may have included microphones to hear what Mars sounded like. The landers would have been dispersed from a main spacecraft bus as it approached Mars so that they would be at multiple locations.