SPACE — Honeybee Robotics has plans to build a massive lighthouse on the moon. They wanted to provide lighting, electricity, and communications infrastructure for plans to develop a lunar economy.
In long-term engineering science, it is called Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beam for Energy Redistribution (LUNARSABER). The idea comes from Honeybee Robotics, a concept selected as part of the 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) initiative of the United States military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The electricity tower is planned to be 100 meters high. On it will be installed solar panels that integrate a number of things such as power storage and transfer, communications, positioning, navigation and surveillance. Everything will become one unified infrastructure.
“Right on top of the structure there are cameras, communication systems. We have spotlights to illuminate the lunar rover area,” said Kris Zacny, vice president of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics, California.
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According to Honeybee Robotics technology experts, to extend the range, LUNARSABER can be scaled to a height of 200 meters above the lunar landscape. LUNARSABER can also be built in a place that is always illuminated by the sun, such as the south pole of the moon.
“You could put one or two of them at the moon’s south pole,” he said.
Workable Structure
LUNARSABER Honeybee principal researcher for DARPA’s LunA-10 program, Wisnu Sanigepali, said there is speculation that the lunar poles have an eternal peak of light. This means that implementing solar panels will help generate electricity throughout the year.
However, after NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mapped the moon, it was found that there were no locations near the poles that received sunlight consistently throughout the year.
“There was a lot of analysis done using lunar topography and it was found that the crater rim near the South Pole has long lunar days because of its altitude, just not 100 percent,” said Sanigepalli.
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Location and Altitude
Another problem is the moon’s structure which is filled with craters and mountains. Sanigepalli said that if they were able to build a very tall structure near the south pole, they could be sure of electricity supply for more than 95 percent of the lunar year. “It depends on the location and altitude,” he said.
2023-12-14 07:15:00
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