Power in space · Generation, transmission, storage, use · Government and first-party sources
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Image of the Day · 2026-09-01

The Core Goes Down

The core goes down into the ice, and the ice opens around it.

An artistic imagining, not real hardware. A diagonal dark crevasse cuts through blue ice from the lower left to the upper right of the frame. A red, glowing cylindrical reactor core hangs on a cable inside the crack, its hot core and bright ports lighting the nearest ice walls with a warm red tint. Fine strata, scratches and a halftone screen cover the ice, and the torn edge of the picture is visible along one side. No text or insignia appears.
An artistic imagining, not real hardware: a fission reactor core being lowered into a crevasse on Enceladus, the only warm thing for hundreds of kilometres, its waste heat lighting the ice walls it passes. Enceladus has a confirmed subsurface ocean and active ice tectonics, but no such reactor exists or is planned. Image: poweringspace.com. Artistic imagining.
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