Re: Spy satellite unscheduled de-orbit


They built a fully functional nuclear reactor around the size of a small garbage can.
Mind you it didn't have any shielding on it, and needed 95% pure U-235 to operate off of (that's weapons-grade U-235), but it was an amazing packaging job nonetheless.

Heard that these things produced interference of some sort to probes examining the Van Allen belts.

You can use solar powered ion engines out as far as the asteroids, but beyond that you are in nuclear power territory.
You run a nuclear powered ion space probe through a couple of gravitational assists around the gas giants, and you could send it out of the solar system and into the Kuiper Belt going like a bat out of hell.


Be careful that it doesn't fly by so fast that you don't get enough time to photograph and do other science at various Kuiper Belt objects.
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