This month's arrival at Saturn of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft following a seven-year voyage was made possible partly by work done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The spacecraft's instruments are powered by generators that convert heat from plutonium-238 fuel into electricity. ORNL developed and fabricated the protective cladding, iridium alloy clad vent sets, to encapsulate the fuel. The iridium alloy "clad vent sets" are resistant to heat and impact and are designed and tested to remain intact even during an unplanned reentry during the spacecraft's 1997 launch or subsequent gravitational-assist flybys a safety feature required by the project. NASA remains an ORNL customer: The iridium alloy-clad vent sets have been used in other deep-space missions (such as Voyager, Galileo and Ulysses) and will be present on the future NASA missions, including the Pluto New Horizons mission planned to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
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