Astronauts could build solar panels using the Moon to allow us to live in space, scientists have suggested.
The new research would allow future explorers of space to build their own ways of gathering energy – and save us from having to use up fuel and resources to blast them into space.
Those are the findings of researchers who were able to create solar panels out of simulated Moon dust and suggest that it could be possible to do the same with the real thing.
The work follows similar research that has looked at possibilities for extracting water from the Moon’s surface, and building bricks for houses out of the dust that is found there.
Like other solar cells, the researchers’ creations are able to convert sunlight into energy, and withstand damage from radiation. But they do so without having to carry heavy solar panels into space.
“The solar cells used in space now are amazing, reaching efficiencies of 30% to even 40%, but that efficiency comes with a price,” says lead researcher Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam, Germany. “They are very expensive and are relatively heavy because they use glass or a thick foil as cover. It’s hard to justify lifting all these cells into space.”
Instead, the researchers examined ways of making those solar cells into space. To do so, astronauts would swap the glass made on Earth with that made from lunar regolith, or the loose, rocky surface that is found on the Moon.
That would allow them to reduce the mass of a spacecraft by 99.4 per cent, they say, slashing costs by 99 per cent. That in turn would allow us to more easily, quickly and cheaply build lunar settlements, they suggest.
To test the plan researchers gathered a substance that is designed to simulate the dust found on the Moon. They made that into a kind of glass – moonglass – and then built solar cells with it.
They did so by pairing the moonglass with perovskite, which has sometimes been referred to as a miracle material because of its ability to cheaply, easily and efficiently convert sunlight into electricity.
“If you cut the weight by 99 per cent, you don’t need ultra-efficient 30 per cent solar cells, you just make more of them on the Moon," said Lang. "Plus, our cells are more stable against radiation, while the others would degrade over time.”
They tested the radiation capabilities by shooting space-grade radiation at the solar cells. They found that the moonglass cells were actually better than those made on Earth, because standard glass turns brown in space but the natural brown tint of moonglass allows it to be more stable.
It is relatively simply to make that moonglass, they found, without requiring complex purification and needing only concentrated sunlight to melt.
But there may yet be further challenges. The lower gravity on the Moon might make it form differently, and it would not be possible to process perovskites in the vacuum on the Moon, for instance.
The research is described in a new paper, ‘Moon Photovoltaics utilizing Lunar Regolith and Halide Perovskites’, published in the journal Device.
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