Portfolio company’s NM-powered solar charging station could land on the moon
Our portfolio company, mPower has been chosen to design a charging station on the moon. Read the full article from Kevin Robinson-Avila at the Albuquerque Journal.
https://www.abqjournal.com/2395939/nmpowered-solar-charging-station-could-land-on-the-moon.html
A novel lunar charging station fueled by made-in-New-Mexico solar cells could power up future NASA moon missions through a new partnership between Albuquerque-based mPower Technologies and Honeybee Robotics.
California-based Honeybee, which specializes in robotics for space missions, is one of five companies NASA chose this spring to design a lunar charging station to recharge rovers, battery packs and other electrical equipment used by spacecraft and astronauts. Honeybee, in turn, has joined forces with mPower, which weaves tiny solar cells into a flexible, lightweight mesh that’s specially designed to withstand harsh conditions in space.
This illustration shows the solar charging station planned by mPower and Honeybee Robotoics as it will look folded up for transport and then unfolded into a two-story-high solar array. (Courtesy of mPower)
“We were selected as one of five teams for the first stage of a NASA study to develop a vertical solar array for missions on the lunar surface,” mPower CEO Kevin Hell told the Journal. “NASA crews will be able to deploy power as needed and then fold the charging station back up and stow it for relocation.”
Under the 12-month, $700,000 NASA contract, the partners will compete against four other commercial teams to move onto the second phase of NASA’s Vertical Solar Array Technology, or VSAT, project. In the second stage, two firms will receive $7.5 million each to build a workable prototype of their technology for potential inclusion in NASA’s forthcoming lunar missions.
“The technology needs to be very resilient to withstand the extreme cold of the lunar environment where dust and other elements are constantly floating around,” Hell said. “I believe our technology gives Honeybee a huge advantage in that regard.”
mPower’s technology is made with tiny solar cells about the width of a human hair that the company entwines into a robust, textile-like photovoltaic lace that’s extremely light and bendable, allowing it to be folded up and stored in small spaces for later deployment.
Sandia National Laboratories originally created the micro solar cells, which mPower licensed in 2017 to build into flexible arrays called DragonSCALES.
Honeybee has built space robotics for nearly 40 years for NASA and other entities, including digging and drilling tools. Its electromechanical devices have flown on three NASA missions to Mars.
Honeybee will build the charging station structure that holds mPower’s DragonSCALES, including a new boom that will unfold into a two-story-high array on the lunar surface, said Honeybee Vice President of Exploration Systems Kris Zacny.
“Honeybee has spent decades designing, testing, and flying mechanisms for planetary surfaces,” Zacny said in a statement. “Our expertise in subsurface drilling is now going to be flipped on its head to ‘dig’ up, rather than down. We are thankful to NASA for being selected and very excited by the possibility of combining our expertise with that of mPower.”
Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency expects to return to the moon in the next few years and establish a sustainable presence at the lunar South Pole. It will need a reliable, sustainable power source to support lunar habitats, rovers, and even construction systems for robotic and crewed missions.
Vertical solar arrays can help prevent loss of power at the lunar poles where the sun doesn’t rise very far above the horizon, said Chuck Taylor, who is leading the VSAT project at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. When low-angled light hits rocky formations like hills and slopes in those areas, it casts a shadow over the surface. That can block light from hitting horizontally-structured arrays, but vertical ones can avoid those shadows.
“These solar power designs could help enable continuous power for Artemis lunar habitats and operations, even in areas that are shaded by rocky features,” Taylor said in a statement.
The Honeybee partnership could strengthen mPower efforts to deploy DragonSCALES in a variety of space operations. That could include participation in NASA missions to the moon or Mars if the Honeybee-mPower team wins a second-phase VSAT contract, or on missions managed by other agencies and private companies, Hell said.
“After we validate the technology with NASA, this design could be used in a range of places and on different spacecraft,” Hell said. “Various groups are looking at applications for it.”
mPower is also already working with other companies to place DragonSCALES on satellites and other craft. Its solar arrays are now integrated into three different spacecraft awaiting launch, Hell said.
The company, which formed in 2015, is also working on terrestrial applications, such as offering a lightweight, flexible power supply in remote locations. It recently delivered a 100-watt prototype for storage in a backpack to the military under a $1.1 million small business research grant the U.S. Army approved in December 2019.
“It weighs roughly three pounds,” Hell said. “You take it out of the backpack and place it on the ground to quickly deploy a remote solar power source.”
The company, which employs 16 people at offices in Albuquerque and San Diego, has raised $5.25 million in private equity. That includes investments from Sun Mountain Capital and Cottonwood Technology Fund in Santa Fe, and NMA Ventures in Albuquerque.
“They have phenomenal technology that originally came out of Sandia,” NMA Ventures Managing Partner Dorian Rader told the Journal. “It’s a homegrown company with New Mexico-made technology that will eventually manufacture its products here once its technology is commercially deployed.”