New batches of plutonium-238 may become available to NASA starting in 2017, perhaps preventing feared shortages of this vital spacecraft fuel.
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Despite the bad budget news, some restart planning and technological development are already underway, according to Carroll. And NASA is doing what it can to help the project along.
"Right now, I think there's $10 million in this year's budget and $10 million in next year's budget, which we do plan on sending to the Department of Energy to continue the efforts that we've begun," Leonard Dudzinski, a NASA program executive who deals with radioisotope power systems, said at the NETS conference.
"I'm fully confident that we will be able to continue this, and ultimately have plutonium produced in this country again in kilogram quantities, on an annual basis," he added.
The goal is to eventually produce between 3.3 pounds and 4.4 pounds (1.5 to 2 kg) of plutonium-238 per year, which should be enough to support NASA's robotic planetary science missions, Dudzinsky said.
"Now, if there were other missions that came along on the human side, then I think we would need more," he added. "But to date, those missions have not materialized."
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