NASA Wants Robots To Build The Moonbase For $200 Million
NASA has $200 million to boost new technologies to set up a base camp on the moon. The Artemis III mission, scheduled to launch in 2024, will take humankind back to the moon. While the first crewed missions will live and work inside the Starship Lunar lander, in the long run, NASA wants to build a more advanced lunar Base in the south pole.
Humans have lived in space for more than 20 years since the International Space Station (ISS) began operations in 2000. However, living on the moon, more than 238 thousand miles away from Earth, is more challenging. A higher degree of sustainability and independence is needed. Astronauts are expected to live on the moon for periods no shorter than one year.
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NASA is offering $200 million to help companies develop technology for the lunar space station. NASA will fund the best ideas to work on and near the moon through the Tipping Point program. NASA needs solid, innovative approaches for power distribution infrastructures, lunar resources utilization technologies and autonomous construction on the lunar surface.
The lunar base will require lots of energy for science, drilling, operating heavy machinery, powering living quarters, communications, astronomy devices, extracting resources and many others systems. With the moon's south pole not receiving much sunlight, NASA is considering small nuclear plants to power its base. But experts call for more green technologies.
Ideas to construct solar plants in more sunlight-rich regions of the moon using autonomous rovers and robots have been thrown around. The other problem with energy is how to store it. Batteries storage is the most traditional method but is expensive and
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