Energy management

Energy storage and electricity generation in the Moon

One of the biggest challenges of the Moon exploration is the survival of the crew and the lunar assets during the lunar night. Lunar environment is a harsh, alien environment that requires technological solutions to problems that must be surmounted or mitigated if long term exploration is the ultimate goal. Short term sojourns ranging from a few days, like the Apollo missions, to a week or so can be accomplished without expending major effort into finding technological solutions. However, near-permanent presence on a human lunar outpost requires careful attention to detail and systematically worked out requirements and the means to achieve them. Environmental conditions on the lunar surface and its cycle, with long periods of darkness, make any long mission in need of specific amounts of heat and electricity to be successful. We are currently working on a system to store heat and produce electricity in the Moon. When the Sun is shining on the Moon’s surface, the system can run a heat engine directly using the solar power and simultaneously heat a thermal mass. This thermal mass is used as a high temperature source to run the heat engine during the night to produce electricity.

Figure: Thermal Energy System with Fresnel reflectors as Reflector-Concentrator-Collector subsystem. Fresnel reflectors (blue), High Temperature Thermal Energy Reservoir (dark grey), Stirling engine (grey) and radiator as a part of the Low Temperature Thermal Energy Reservoir with its shield (turquoise and beige, respectively).