[ad_1]
A lamp for the moon – a nice idea.
In long engineering language it is called Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution, or LUNARSABER. The idea comes from Honeybee Robotics, an idea selected as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) initiative.
This energy tower is about 330 feet (100 meters) tall, a scalable structure that is installed on solar panels to combine things like storage and transfer of electricity, communication , as well as position, navigation, and time, even being able to monitor one. capital assets.
Honeybee Robotics engineers hope to be able to lift LUNARSABER more than 650 feet (200 meters) above the lunar surface four increase his service. “LUNARSABER can be above the horizon and always see the sun when we are at the south pole of the moon,” said Kris Zacny, vice president of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California. “On the top of the structure there are cameras, communication systems. We have flood lights to illuminate areas for rovers,” said Zacny to Space.com. “You put one or two of them at the south pole of the moon and you cover the whole area, your orange light,” he said.
Target: The moon is changed by human activities. Are we in a ‘Lunar Anthropocene?’
Installation instructions
Vishnu Sanigepalli is the Honeybee principal investigator of LUNARSABER in the DARPA LunA-10 effort.
Sanigepalli says that the poles of the moon will have peaks of eternal light which the use of solar energy will help to generate energy throughout the year.
But when NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) began to map the moon, it was discovered that there are no places near the poles that receive sunlight all year round.
“Several studies have been done using lunar maps that have found that crater rims near the South Pole have longer lunar days because of their height, but not 100 percent,” said Sanigepalli.
Just being at the south pole of the moon does not give you long lunar days. You should also stop at the highest mountain or two.
Location and height
“If we can build tall structures near the south poles, we can ensure more than 95 percent light throughout the year,” Sanigepalli said. “It depends on the location and the highest,” he emphasized.
Sanigepalli says that pit banks are a great option because they are already high. If tall structures are built, more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) high, they can encourage expansion to other regions and locations on the moon.
Useful solutions
For the settlement of the moon, said Sanigepalli, continuous illumination is not enough. “We also need communication with the Earth to maintain the operation of the moon, robotics system, and other equipment. Therefore, it becomes the explanation of the illumination for the power and direct communication-to-Earth,” he said this.
LUNARSABER is capable of exploiting the resources on the moon as a highly flexible utility solution that is fundamental to a viable lunar economy, the company believes.
“We are looking forward to partnerships with commercial and non-commercial customers to introduce payments and services that will help accelerate the development of the moon,” said Sanigepalli.
RedWater
As lunar exploration ideas expand in the near future, Honeybee Robotics is also developing RedWater, a mining system intended to drill on Mars and dilute / remove water from specific Red Planet sites.
“This mining system is several tens of meters deep, goes to the ice underground, then melts and pumps water up,” said Zacny. “A robotic device can dig and drill the planet,” he said, and can extract tens of tons of water from the ice reservoir under Mars.
RedWater is another In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technology that enables and sustains human exploration of Mars through the use of water that is used for everything from life support and agriculture to cell heating and propulsion.
RAT and spoon
Honeybee Robotics is no stranger to designing, building and using their tools on other worlds. The new company supplied the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) that was used on NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers that landed on the Red Planet in January 2004.
Their equipment was installed and demonstrated on NASA’s 2008 Mars Phoenix Lander mission. That ice machine was more commonly known as the “Phoenix Scoop.”
Other tools provided by Honeybee Robotics are on NASA’s two active Mars rovers, Curiosity and Pasimau.
Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which is scheduled for a 2026 sendoff, is equipped with a P-sampler supplied to Honeybee Robotics. That device is mounted on the leg of the MMX lander, designed to perform experimental tests after the Japanese probe of Phobos.
Making machines for work outside of Earth is a challenge, Zacny said, “but that’s part of the fun of developing something from scratch.