A reliable power supply to support human and robotic missions in the lunar environment has been engineered by Honeybee Robotics. The Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution (LUNARSABER) technology is expected to inform an infrastructure framework for the 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study launched by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The Luna-10 project intends to catalyze the setup of a future civil lunar framework for power and communications services on the Moon. To that end, Honeybee Robotics is advancing its LUNARSABER system that combines power storage and transfer, communications, mesh network, navigation and surveillance into a single infrastructure. Engineered to a height of 100 m or more, the LUNARSABER mast will incorporate solar panels, batteries, lighting systems, and wireless power and communications transmission equipment.

LUNARSABER will provide services to various lunar assets such as mesh network comms, power generation and power transfer. Source: Honeybee Robotics

Each stand-alone tower will be capable of generating and storing 100 kW of power by means of solar panels wrapped around the masts to capture sunlight from any angle; another type of solar collector is designed to track the location of the sun. These capabilities are predicted to provide access to nearly 95% of the solar light throughout the year.

The DARPA program is funding the development of this and other technologies to create monetizable commercial services on and around the Moon by 2035.