Research analysis

NASA's Fission Surface Power project aims to demonstrate a tens-of-kilowatt class nuclear fission reactor on the Moon in the next decade. A 2024 DragonCon presentation by NASA Glenn authors Kaldon and Presby captures the current project status, technical goals, and forward plans.

The GAO's 1987 report on space reactor power systems development found management coordination gaps among sponsoring organizations and concerns about safety-related tasks. Nearly 40 years later, the same coordination and safety challenges recur as NASA, DOE, and DOD pursue new space nuclear programs.

The EESP project at NASA Glenn develops photovoltaic technology for missions far from the Sun, where solar intensity drops with the square of distance and radiation degrades cell performance. The Juno mission to Jupiter demonstrated that solar power is viable at 5 AU with large arrays, but the challenge scales with distance.

The ASRG life certification plan confronts the fundamental problem that a Stirling engine has moving parts that wear, and that no analytical model can fully substitute for decades of test time. NASA Glenn's plan emphasizes long-term Stirling engine testing and inspection where analysis is not practical.

NASA Glenn's 2012 Space Power Workshop presentation frames the central architecture trade for high-power spacecraft PMAD: raise distribution voltage to shrink cable mass and ohmic losses, at the cost of arc risk and converter complexity. Cable mass becomes a dominant fraction of power system mass as power levels climb.

NASA Glenn reports state-of-the-art Li-ion at 200 Wh/kg plateauing at 300 Wh/kg, short of the 500+ Wh/kg NASA needs. Li-air offers 3400 Wh/kg theoretical but fails after a handful of cycles due to electrolyte decomposition.

A 2009 LLNL technical report proposes a 1 MW laser power beaming system on a single Falcon 9 to LEO, using a 50 percent efficient diode-pumped laser, 40 percent efficient concentrator PV, and inflatable optics. No integrated system has been built.

NASA's Roll-Out Solar Array uses carbon fiber composite booms that self-deploy without mechanisms, and has flown on the ISS as both a test article and operational iROSA augmentations. Maxar has infused the modular design into commercial GEO satellites.

A 1996 NASA/JPL contractor report compiled GaAs solar cell radiation degradation data into a handbook with equations, damage coefficients, and a calculation methodology that lets spacecraft designers predict end-of-life array performance.

NASA Glenn traded regenerative fuel cell architectures for lunar and Martian surface power, finding that RFCs storing energy as compressed H2 and O2 can bridge the two-week lunar night at lower mass than batteries for long-duration storage.

NASA's RPS Program, with DOE, is developing Dynamic Radioisotope Power Systems (DRPS) using Stirling convertors that offer higher efficiency than thermoelectric RTGs. The effort builds on SRG-110 and ASRG heritage but no dynamic RPS has ever flown in space, and the maturation gap between bench-level demonstration and flight qualification remains open.

NASA's Next Generation RTG project, a partnership with Idaho National Laboratory, will refurbish GPHS-RTG Flight Unit F-5 and re-establish silicon-germanium thermoelectric converter manufacturing. The project will deliver an unfueled, flight-qualified RTG based on heritage hardware, not a new design from scratch.

An NSF SBIR Phase I award to Verde Technologies investigates perovskite solar cells fabricated directly on metal foil substrates instead of conventional glass or plastic, targeting a lightweight, flexible, and potentially recyclable solar technology. The key technical risk is that metal foil surfaces are rougher and harder to process, which can introduce defects and limit device stability, and the project aims to overcome this through interface engineering and transparent top contact design.

NASA's Space Nuclear Propulsion project published a Technology Maturation Plan for high power nuclear electric propulsion, finding most key technologies at or below TRL 4 at the component level and lower at the subsystem level. The plan targets TRL 5 by the mid-to-late 2020s to enable a 2030s Mars mission, but the advancement degree of difficulty is high enough to support multiple development paths.

NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy released a white paper assessing whether space-based solar power could deliver electricity at competitive prices by 2050. The study is a policy and cost analysis, not a technology development plan, and it weighs whether and how NASA should support SBSP development against terrestrial alternatives.

DARPA's Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay program demonstrated over 800 watts of laser power delivered across 8.6 km, setting a distance record for optical power beaming. The test was ground-to-ground through the thickest atmosphere, not a space link, and the 20 percent end-to-end efficiency was measured at shorter range, not at the record distance.

A government team from NASA Glenn, Los Alamos, and Idaho National Laboratory developed an independent 40 kWe lunar fission surface power concept, trading Stirling against Brayton conversion, sodium-potassium against water cooling, and shielding geometry against launch mass. The result is a reference architecture for architecture studies, not a flight-ready design.

An NSF-funded project at Penn State proposes using electron wind force, the momentum transfer from conducting electrons to defect structures, to recover gallium nitride power electronics degraded by radiation exposure in extreme environments. The method is non-thermal, electrically programmable, and aims to extend device life without turning systems off or applying heat.