Energy – Luna 2076

Illustration credit: Kevin Hand, Wall Street Journal

Some scientists and engineers say that solar energy could be captured in space and beamed to Earth as microwaves or laser beams within the next ten years, reports the Wall Street Journal in a special feature, “The Next Bets for Renewable Energy.”

“The basics are to put a large, very large platform in space, harvest sunlight, where the sun shines, essentially 99.95% of the time, and send it to markets on the ground, where, on average, the sun is shining only about 15% of the time,” says former NASA scientist John Mankins, president of Mankins Space Technology, a company working on developing a 1-mile-wide solar power satellite prototype that will use microwave beaming.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory has already tested the feasibility of transferring energy using microwave transmission, sending 1.6 kilowatts a distance of more than 0.6 miles. Japanese engineers have sent a comparable amount of energy the length of a football field. Meanwhile, the California Institute of Technology plans to test prototypes that can transfer power by means of a steerable microwave beam by the end of 2022. more “Space-Based Solar Power Within Ten Years?”

Artist’s rendering of a nuclear power system on the Moon. Photo credit: NASA

NSA has successfully tested a design for a small nuclear-fission reactor, the Kilopower, that could provide a reliable source of power on the Moon.

Current space missions, reports Scientific American, use fuel cells, nuclear batteries or solar power, but each source has drawbacks. A a night on the Moon lasts two weeks, and the strength of sunlight on Mars is only 40% that of earth. “When we go to the moon and eventually on to Mars, we are likely going to need large power sources not dependent on the sun, especially if we want to live off the land,” says Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for space technology.

Kilopower is a small, lightweight fission reactor that can provide up to 10 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power three to eight typical American houses — and enough to power a human outpost on the Moon or Mars. more “Tiny Nuclear Reactors Could Provide Energy on the Moon”

Luna 2076

Category: Energy