Israeli solar panels planned on the Moon to produce oxygen

As NASA plans to use a nuclear reactor, an Israeli researcher claims his idea will produce the same amount of energy with six times less mass. An American-born Israeli scientist has developed a project to equip the Moon with solar panels.

In 2024, the Artemis II projectwhich was joined more than a dozen countries, including Israelwill take astronauts to the Moon, but never land there. And if everything goes according to plan, 2025 will mark the first human landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

By the middle of the next decade – writes the site The Times of IsraelNational Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to fill its first permanent camp with rotating research groups.

To make this possible, one of the main challenges will be to extract and separate the metals and oxygen bound together, according to a process called molten regolith electrolysis (from the Helios launch), which uses an earth-fed reactor. It melts lunar soil at 1,600 degrees Celsius and then creates oxygen through electrolysis, which is stored for later use.

According to the administration's website, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy are working to advance space nuclear technology. The website states that “nuclear fission systems are reliable and can provide a continuous supply of energy regardless of location, available sunlight, and other natural environmental conditions. Demonstration of such systems on the Moon will pave the way for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.”

As an alternative, an American-born Israeli scientist has developed a project to equip the Moon with solar panels.

Honorable Professor Geoffrey Gordon from the Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University estimated that this solution would require six times less massthan a better nuclear option to deliver the same amount of energy.

He claims his proposal will ensure uninterrupted power supply to oxygen production facilities 100% of the time by having enough panels constantly exposed to the sun.

“We discussed it and it was interesting,” Gordon said, explaining that solar researchers at the research center were competing with other scientists working on a nuclear solution.

“NASA wants a reliable, durable system with minimal mass,” he said. “The reliability even outweighs the cost. »

At the initial stage of human space exploration, only small amounts of energy will be required. NASA has already selected six companies to submit their proposals, three of which are based on solar energy and three use nuclear fission.

However, in the long term, NASA will need more energy to extract water, which exists in various states on the Moon, and to extract metals from the lunar surface that will be used to build the Moon, as well as to separate these metals from the oxygen that makes up about 45% of the rocky sediments. .

Professor Gordon's research began when he was contacted several years ago by Israeli startup Helioswhich designed a lunar reactor that produces oxygen using technology that requires very high temperatures.

A joint application for funding from the Israel Innovation Authority was rejected and the partnership was terminated, but not before Gordon had developed his conceptual plan for a solar cell ring on the Moon.

Oxygen extracted from lunar regolith will be used for human needs, but will primarily be used to power and refuel rockets and satellites in orbit.

Today's rockets must be loaded with enough liquid oxygen and hydrogen to provide the propulsion needed to fly into space and back to Earth.

Currently for every kilogram the necessary filler goes away about a million dollars. Costs could be reduced if oxygen could be supplied to “moon stations”.

Before starting, Professor Gordon considered three optionsone of which was nuclear, although as a solar energy expert he was keen to develop an alternative to solar energy. The benchmark was round-the-clock electricity generation.

Two solar options—generating solar power when the sun is shining and storing it in batteries during periods of darkness, or building twice as many solar power plants as needed and running each one only half the time—have proven to be financially impossible. .

“I came up with the concept and did all the quantitative assessments that a space agency engineer would want to look at,” Gordon explained.

His plan calls for installing a ring of solar panels near one of the lunar poles; he used the North Pole as an illustration. They will not be located above (or below, in the case of the south pole) latitude 88, in order to balance the advantage of the Moon's relatively short circumference in these regions with the need to ensure that shorter periods of daylight always match energy demands.

Oxygen production plants will be located approximately 10 kilometers from the pole. This would maintain enough distance to prevent lunar dust from mining from hitting the photovoltaic panels, while still keeping transmission lines relatively short.

“Power lines themselves do not require any insulation,” Professor Gordon noted, since the lunar soil provides natural electrical insulation.

“Experiments to test the resistance of photovoltaic panels to cosmic rays appear promising,” Professor Gordon added. “PV cells must be able to withstand cosmic rays long enough to meet demand,” he said.

But his biggest concern—and NASA's—is how to sufficiently protect the people who will operate the oxygen plants, among other tasks. “There is no answer to this question yet,” he said.

Gordon said he had “no opinion” on the potential risks of building nuclear reactors on the Moon, and noted that nuclear fuel could easily last 100,000 years, even if the turbines and generators failed within a few decades.

“Nuclear waste management is a good issue,” he acknowledged, adding that “there will be nuclear pollution.”

“Right now, I feel like NASA is planning nuclear reactors on the moon in the long term, and solar proponents are trying to convince them otherwise, or at least have both technologies,” he continued.

His own project is still “in the distant horizon.”

NASA has yet to comment.

Israeli solar panels on the moon to produce oxygen

Israeli solar panels on the moon to produce oxygen – source The Times of Israel

“Veles-Energo”, TOV Sonyachny panelsstations, sales, installation, warranty. 29000. m. Khmelnitsky, Lvivske highway, 20/1 https://veles-energy.biz.ua/