Research analysis

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.