Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Artistic depiction of NASA astronauts at the lunar south pole carrying out early work to establish an Artemis Base Camp.
Image credit: NASA

“Would you like to…carry moonbeams home in a jar…and be better off than you are?”

Those words come from the Oscar-winning 1944 film Going My Way – but could be linked to a 21^st century Moon base.

A fresh idea that’s beaming with promise is Moonbeam-Beamed Lunar Power. Research into the concept has been backed by NASA’s Lunar Surface Technology Research Opportunities initiative, long-hand for the abbreviation: LuSTR.

LuSTR is a product of the Space Technology Research Grants Program, carried out under the space agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.

Image credit: Lubin, et al.

Project Moonbeam is the brainchild of Philip Lubin and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The idea is to develop a directed energy system capable of flexible power distribution for difficult-to-reach and mobile applications on the Moon.

Extension cord

The project goal is to create a “photonic extension cord,” says Lubin and his fellow researchers. What that term means is beaming near-infrared directed energy laser light to distant assets, where it is converted into useful electricity by tuned high efficiency photovoltaics.

“The modular directed energy system enables a wide variety of lunar mission profiles due its scalability and efficiency, made possible by the Moore’s Law-like exponential growth in photonics,” according to Lubin.

Image credit: NASA

This technology ultimately enables electrification less than a mile (1 kilometer) away, offering tower-to-tower power at distances exceeding 62 miles (100 kilometers) and power levels exceeding 10 kilowatts.

Key elements

Project Moonbeam work entails development of a high-efficiency low mass laser and laser PV converter, including thermal management/storage, the design and construction of a high-fidelity laboratory demonstration system, including a beam director and a fine pointing system for target locking, capable of field use and extendable to flight, and power-up testing of equipment.

In addition, thermal batteries will be developed to store waste heat of energy not converted to electrical energy, allowing nearly 100% conversion efficiency at the receiver for electrical and thermal energy combined, according to project documentation.

For more information on LuSTR and its various research avenues, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/strg/lustr

One Response to “Project Moonbeam: Powering the Lunar Workload”