Will Mars rover Curiosity be the last of its nuclear kind?

When the Mars rover Curiosity takes off tomorrow, it'll be packing a plutonium battery to power its myriad scientific instruments, but it could be one of the last to do so if NASA's next budget doesn't get approved.

The space agency and the US Department of Energy are swiftly running out of plutonium-238, a radioactive isotope whose heat is converted to electricity to power space missions that can't run off solar panels for one reason or another.

[link to www.theregister.co.uk]