From the Mines Newsroom: Students from Colorado School of Mines’ Space Resources Program are developing a wireless system that could beam power to lunar rovers exploring deep inside the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon.
The Mines students, along with collaborators at the University of Arizona, are one of eight collegiate teams working on real-world solutions to NASA’s space technology hurdles as part of the space agency’s 2020 Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.
Teams received NASA funding earlier this year to design and build a sample lunar lander payload that tackles one of the biggest challenges for future lunar exploration: how to supply power and collect data inside the dark, sunless craters near the Moon’s polar regions – home to potentially valuable reserves of water ice.
“The water trapped in the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon could be used as rocket propellant and break what’s called the ‘tyranny of the rocket equation,’” said Ross Centers, a space resources graduate student at Mines and member of the BIG Idea team. “The first stage is exploration – prospecting – and in order to do that, we need to power rovers at levels on the orders of kilowatts and kilometers away from where there is sun energy.”
The team’s prototype laser transmitter features a familiar logo on one side. (Photo courtesy of Ross Centers)
Their “big” idea, the Lunar Autonomous Scalable Emitter and Receiver (LASER), would transmit power to eight FemtoSats ejected onto the lunar surface via a laser mounted on a lunar lander. The tiny receivers, developed atthe University of Arizona, would be approximately the size of two 1-inch cubes side by side and covered in solar panels.
“The idea is that the lander would eject the FemtoSats out in various directions and ranges up to tens of meters from the lander. They will tumble in the regolith, but because they are covered in solar panels, no matter what way they land they will be visible to the laser,” Centers said.
The solar panels will then measure the amount of light received from the lander-mounted laser and report back to the lander via Wi-Fi communication to prove the concept of wireless power transmission.
“We know that laser power transmission is not inherently super efficient. If you’re on the energy grid, it’s always better to have a wire,” Centers said. “But when you’re in a novel environment and there’s no infrastructure at all and you have to get power over many, many kilometers – as is the case on the Moon’s surface – it’s a great option.”
The eight finalist teams will have the opportunity to present their final project results to NASA judges during a three-day virtual symposium in January 2021.