Astrobotic Wins Two NASA Prizes for Lunar Power Infrastructure
PITTSBURGH (Astrobotic PR) — Astrobotic, the world’s leading lunar logistics company, has won two prizes for Phase 1 of NASA’s Watts on the Moon Centennial Challenge. The prizes further establish Astrobotic as a pioneer in lunar surface power generation, distribution, storage, and management.
Astrobotic won the Challenge’s grand prize for Mission Activity 1, a conceptual mission to deliver power from a solar array on the rim of a permanently shadowed, lunar polar crater to a NASA rover on the crater floor. Astrobotic’s solution consists of a fleet of tethered CubeRovers that drive out from the solar array to the NASA rover and other surface assets. The CubeRovers deploy physical power transmission cables as they go, rappel down the steep crater walls, and finally charge the assets via contactless proximity wireless chargers. All the primary elements of this system have been in development at Astrobotic for several years.
Astrobotic also partnered with Eternal Light, a company specializing in lunar energy distribution. Together – through a collaboration dubbed AstroLight – they won a prize for Mission Activity 2, a conceptual mission to deliver power to a NASA water extraction plant inside the crater. The teams’ solution consisted of wireless mobile power transmission, or power beaming, from the rim to the crater floor.
Both prizes complement Astrobotic’s ongoing development of lunar surface power infrastructure, including Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT) and proximity wireless chargers being advanced through existing NASA Game Changing Development and Tipping Point contracts, respectively. The wireless chargers are being matured in partnership with WiBotic and the University of Washington.
“With our recent infrastructure wins, Astrobotic now has a hand in what are expected to be the primary means of power distribution on the lunar surface: physical cables and power beaming,” said John Thornton, Astrobotic CEO. “Imagine hiring one company to tackle everything for you, end-to-end – your payload’s integration, delivery, mobility, and continuous power all streamlined from one source. Astrobotic is quickly approaching this business model.”
In total, 60 U.S.-based teams submitted designs to Phase 1 of the Watts on the Moon Challenge. Phase 2, expected to open in fall 2021 and award up to $4.5 million in additional prizes, will culminate in technology demonstrations of working prototypes of the Phase 1 designs.
8 responses to “Astrobotic Wins Two NASA Prizes for Lunar Power Infrastructure”
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…Imagine hiring one company to tackle everything for you, end-to-end – your payload’s integration, delivery, mobility, and continuous power all streamlined from one source…
Yeah. When I imagine that, I imagine everything that could go wrong. Dissimilar redundancy is a beautiful thing.
As long as it’s not too dissimilar. There are, for example, 15 different voltage and frequency standards for AC electricity in use on Earth. There is no uniformity even among the dozen nations that have signed the Artemis Accords. What will the lunar standard be? That’s a question that needs answering quite soon.
Four of the dozen nations that are Artemis Accords signatories also drive on the left. Again, a lunar road standard will have to be set before much longer.
I hope SpaceX, by “getting there fustest with the mostest,” establishes American standards as lunar standards also, but I can see some potential for pushback from some of the Artemis Accords nations. Most of the world does not drive on the left, but a sizable majority of it does use 50Hz AC and usually at double the standard American voltages. So the Moon might wind up with right-handed roads and 220V 50Hz power infrastructure.
Or not. Fun times ahead.
All good points.
So…I’ve been following your comments on Gateway vs. Starship with great interest. I find no flaws with your vision…except for one thing. Your prognostications assume that Elon will be with us for quite a while. I fervently hope that he will be…but it’s not guaranteed. That’s one of the reasons I support Gateway…at least until something better does prove itself. And, like you, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Starship is fully functional before Gateway is fully built. But it’s been said not to put all your eggs in one basket. I’d call that good advice.
Nothing is certain but death and taxes, as the saying goes. That said, Elon just turned 50 and looks to be in good enough shape to make meeting or exceeding the average life expectancy of an American of his age the default bet. Not that SpaceX would disappear in a flash without him. The general plan for the next three decades seems pretty well laid out by now and Mama Gwynne would see that it stays on track even if the velocity notched down a bit in Elon’s absence.
Despite being no great fan of Gateway, I’m also not an opponent. The governments of the world, especially ours, have long since grown accustomed to doing stupid and expensive things in space for political reasons unmoored from economic reality and any real consideration for the future. I view Gateway as a sort of space programmatic methadone – something to feed both U.S. and foreign legacy OldSpace until it either gets clean or dies while NewSpace is busy building humanity’s actual future in space.
As far as the idea of a space station in lunar orbit, I’m entirely in favor of such. But, as with LEO, where I think the economics of space stations favors a much larger size, plus rotation for artificial gravity, I think the same anent lunar orbit. In LEO, a big rotating space station would best serve to make orbital space tourism a mass market. In lunar orbit, I think the same characteristics would allow people working either permanently, or on long-term contracts, on the Moon, a place to go for some periodic R&R in full Earth gravity without having to go all the way back to Earth for it. Also, as with LEO, I think the presence of such a large station would vastly improve the logistics expense for smaller lunar-orbiting stations that might be built – of which Gateway might prove to be just the first.
Thanks for your reply…the methadone analogy is priceless. I have read that NASA is leery of rotating stations because of potential stress introduced to the structure by the constant movement. Seems reasonable. Your thoughts?
It’s a B.S. excuse. Large civil engineering projects Earthside are also subjected to constant stress from opposing gravity. That doesn’t prevent them from being successful in withstanding same – for the most part.
Yes, Elon Musk has not only built a company, but a culture that believes in what it is doing and a revenue stream to enable it.
Which I expect, in fairly short order, to be multiple revenue streams from both additional non-Starlink operations in LEO and various operations on the Moon.