Lifeboat Foundation

According to a study by Astrostrom for ESA, future Moon bases could be powered by a giant space butterfly called the Greater Earth Lunar Power Station (GEO-LPS) covered with solar panels made from lunar materials beaming microwaves to the surface.

One of the major design concerns in setting up a lunar base is finding a reliable means of powering it. Solar power might seem the obvious answer, but with lunar nights lasting 14 Earth days, it isn’t a practical option. However, though the most promising alternative is currently a small nuclear reactor, solar may not be out of the running.

The idea of solar power plants in space has been around for well over half a century. On Earth, solar panels are limited by night time, atmospheric haze, and bad weather, making them only capable of intermittent power generation with limited efficiency. On the other hand, in space, where there is no night and no atmosphere, solar power becomes very attractive.

The project is expected to be completed by 2026 and could help meet multiple energy demands.

China has completed a significant step toward establishing the world’s first commercial onshore small modular reactor. It has finished the installation of the core module of the reactor that it began building in 2021, the South China Morning Post.

With a power generation capacity of not more than 300 MW, small modular reactors (SMR) are believed to be the future of nuclear fission reactors. The advanced nuclear reactor design allows the power plant to be scaled down and established in remote locations that cannot be connected to the grid.

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FUTABA, Japan (AP) — At Japan’s tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, giant blue pipes have been constructed to bring in torrents of seawater to dilute treated, radioactive water under a plan to discharge it gradually into the Pacific Ocean.

Workers were making final preparations as Associated Press journalists received a rare opportunity Friday to get a look at key equipment and facilities for the release, expected in coming weeks or months.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has looked at Japan’s wastewater-release plan and said it would cause negligible radioactivity in the sea and no effect on neighboring countries. But the plans continue to draw strong protest and no starting date has been set.

Nuclear fusion propulsion technology has the potential to revolutionize space travel in terms of both speeds and fuel usage. The same kinds of reactions that power the Sun could halve travel times to Mars, or make a journey to Saturn and its moons take just two years rather than eight.

It’s incredibly exciting, but not everyone is convinced this is going to work: the tech needs ultra-high temperatures and pressures to function.

To help prove the viability of the technology, the largest ever fusion rocket engine is now being built by Pulsar Fusion in Bletchley, in the UK.

A trio of astrophysicists, two from Colgate University and the third from the University of Texas, has found evidence of dark stars courtesy of data from the James Webb Space Telescope. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cosmin Ilie, Jillian Paulin and Katherine Freese, analyzed three galaxies spotted by the JWST and how they might relate to dark stars.

Back in 2007, Freese, along with Douglas Spolyar and Paolo Gondolo, proposed the idea of a dark star —rather than nuclear fusion, these theorized dark stars are powered by dark matter. Since that time, researchers have continued to study the idea of such a star, built models to show what they might look like and derived a list of characteristics that such a star might have. In the current study, Ilie, Paulin and Freese have found three candidates in Webb data that fit the bill.

Dark stars, the team suggests, likely could have been born during the early days of the universe—like other stars, they would have been made mostly of helium and hydrogen. But they would also contain dark matter—enough to provide a heat source. Such stars would not then be lit by nuclear fusion. If such stars did exist, they would be much larger than other types of stars that have been observed—so large that they might look like galaxies from Earth-based telescopes.

Scientists achieved ignition at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in December 2022. However, there are still many obstacles to overcome before fusion energy is technically and economically feasible for widespread production and use.

Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated a method called dynamic shell formation, which may help achieve the goal of creating a fusion power plant.

Abundant carbon-free energy from nuclear fusion has long been considered a holy grail. Recent technological advances and the emergence of startup companies have led to new optimism, but experts caution that the production of fusion power is still a long way off.

LOS ANGELES – Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear power are among the key technologies Lockheed Martin sees as important for future space missions.

Through a project called Destination: Space 2050, Lockheed Martin executives are exploring, for example, how AI could assist scientific exploration of locations where communications with remote sensors would be disrupted by high latency.

In that type of environment, “you really can’t interact with the robotic sensors,” David Lackner, Lockheed Martin senior manager strategy and business development, said during a June 28 webinar. “You have to have something that is super autonomous that can deal with unknown unknowns. We’ve got some really interesting causal autonomy tools that … allow the AI to be super smart about running into something that it hasn’t encountered before.”