THE AMERICIO FOR SPACE BATTERIES
The batteries used since the sixties to supply energy to spacecraft and probes are based on plutonium which has a life span of about 88 years. Those that supply energy to the New Horizons probe, which reached Ultima Thule a few months ago, the farthest cosmic body ever explored by humanity, will be extinguished around 2026 definitively ending the mission.
Americium is a rare chemical element that is not found in nature, but is generated in the process of decay of plutonium from which nuclear plant waste is made and is discovered in 1944 by a research group of the University of Chicago with bombardment of plutonium with slow neutrons.