WASHINGTON, Sept. 13,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Watts on the Moon
Challenge, designed to advance the nation's lunar exploration goals
under the Artemis campaign by challenging United States innovators to develop
breakthrough power transmission and energy storage technologies
that could enable long-duration Moon missions, concludes on
Friday, Sept. 20, at the Great Lakes
Science Center in Cleveland.
"For astronauts to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon
during Artemis missions, they will need continuous, reliable
power," said Kim Krome-Sieja, acting
program manager, Centennial Challenges at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama. "NASA has done extensive work on power generation
technologies. Now, we're looking to advance these technologies for
long-distance power transmission and energy storage solutions that
can withstand the extreme cold of the lunar environment."
The technologies developed through the Watts on the Moon
Challenge were the first power transmission and energy storage
prototypes to be tested by NASA in an environment that simulates
the extreme cold and weak atmospheric pressure of the lunar
surface, representing a first step to readying the technologies for
future deployment on the Moon. Successful technologies from this
challenge aim to inspire, for example, new approaches for helping
batteries withstand cold temperatures and improving grid resiliency
in remote locations on Earth that face harsh weather
conditions.
Media and the public are invited to attend the grand finale
technology showcase and awards ceremony for the $5 million, two-phase competition. U.S. and
international media interested in covering the event should confirm
their attendance with Lane Figueroa
by 3 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Sept. 17, at:
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov. NASA's media accreditation policy is
available online. Members of the public may register as an attendee
by completing this form, also by Friday,
Sept. 17.
During the final round of competition, finalist teams refined
their hardware and delivered a full system prototype for testing in
simulated lunar conditions at NASA's Glenn Research Center in
Cleveland. The test simulated a
challenging power system scenario where there are six hours of
solar daylight, 18 hours of darkness, and the user is three
kilometers from the power source.
"Watts on the Moon was a fantastic competition to judge because
of its unique mission scenario," said Amy
Kaminski, program executive, Prizes, Challenges, and
Crowdsourcing, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "Each
team's hardware was put to the test against difficult criteria and
had to perform well within a lunar environment in our
state-of-the-art thermal vacuum chambers at NASA Glenn."
Each finalist team was scored based on Total Effective System
Mass (TESM), which determines how the system works in relation to
its mass. At the awards ceremony, NASA will award $1 million to the top team who achieves the
lowest TESM score, meaning that during testing, that team's system
produced the most efficient output-to-mass ratio. The team with the
second lowest mass will receive $500,000. The awards ceremony stream live on NASA
Glenn's YouTube channel and NASA Prize's Facebook page.
The Watts on the Moon Challenge is a NASA Centennial
Challenge led by NASA Glenn. NASA Marshall manages
Centennial Challenges, which are part of the agency's Prizes,
Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space
Technology Mission Directorate. NASA has
contracted HeroX to support the administration of this
challenge.
For more information on NASA's Watts on the Moon Challenge,
visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/wattson
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SOURCE NASA