A new project from space technology company Maxar will use mirrors to autonomously track and reflect sunlight to power solar-powered equipment operating in the shadows of the moon’s slopes and craters.
NASA has set a goal of landing astronauts near the moon’s south pole by 2025 as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The Moon’s south pole is rich in resources such as water ice, but it also experiences long periods of little or no sunlight. These conditions make energy production difficult, leaving few options for recharging batteries and maintaining life support, especially when using solar energy.
Known as the Light Bender, Maxar’s new project aims to address this with stand-alone mirrors that will automatically reflect light toward essential equipment that Artemis astronauts may carry with them to permanently shaded areas of the lunar surface.
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Maxar chief robotics engineer and team leader for Light Bender Sean Dougherty said at Maxar Maxar statement. “Where it gets complicated is doing it without the involvement of humans. We’re leveraging investments in autonomy to study how NASA uses robots to assemble and deploy an array of reflectors that keep sunlight focused on a solar panel operating in the shade. It has been done before.”
The Light Bender works by hoisting two 33-foot (10 m) reflectors atop a 65-foot (20 m) telescopic mast. One mirror independently tracks the sun and reflects that light to a second mirror, which then reflects that rays back toward the intended solar panels.
The Light Bender project is a collaboration between Maxar and NASA’s Langley Research Center and is scheduled to be demonstrated on Earth for the first time in 2025. The company was awarded the contract in May 2023, under a NASA Collaboration Opportunity Program announcement. For their part, the NASA team is responsible for the structural design of the Light Bender, and Maxar is taking the lead in robotics—a competency the company has demonstrated in the past.
Maxar was behind the robotic arm of NASA’s Perseverance rover, and has an extensive background in satellite manufacturing and in-orbit assembly technology development.
Given the size of the Light Bender’s mirrors, Maxar also intends to assemble them once in space. Dougherty says that autonomous robots will be critical to creating the infrastructure needed for long-term lunar exploration. “We don’t currently have crews building on the Moon or Mars, so robots will have to step in. By using these technologies to build infrastructure, bots increase human safety and reduce the number of people who need to get things done.”
Artemis 3 will be the program’s first crewed mission to the lunar surface, and will target the lunar south pole. The mission is scheduled to reach the moon no later than 2025. Meanwhile, Artemis 2 is scheduled to send a crew of four around the moon and back in November 2024.
