Honda and Astrobooth team to keep the lights during the long moon night

Automotive Honda and Lunar is cooperating to explore how renewal fuel cell system can help keep the lights during the long nights on the moon.

On Monday, companies have made a partnership to study whether the regenerative fuel cell in Honda (RFC) in Lunagrid from Astrobotic, a developed energy service based on solar array. The two will conduct “lighting studies” in the southern lunar potential landing sites, evaluate the ability to expand the system as well as the integration of devices and programs.

One of the main challenges to explore the moon is to survive on the two -week moon night, when temperatures can decrease to up to -424 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, while solar panels sit down inactivity. RFC in Honda deals with this problem by storing solar energy as hydrogen during the moon’s day and turning it into electricity at night, which results in water as one secondary product.

Then this water is recycled in the high -pressure electrolysis system to create more hydrogen, which is what Honda calls “closed loop energy cycle”.

Astrobotic (vsat) is designed to track the sun to achieve maximum energy, and it is planned to reach up to 10 kilowatts. The company is also developing the XL version, which will generate five times more energy.

Together, Vsat will collect sunlight during the day to operate the water analysis system, while RFC converts this hydrogen stored into electricity during the night.

The goal is the real moon: a continuous and reliable force on the moon.

Founded in 2007, Pittsboot, based in Pittsburig, is famous for its lunar skills that were launched at the beginning of this year, but did not complete its mission. The company is also developing energy and mobility systems as part of its goal of building a moon’s economy.

For Honda, the agreement represents a noticeable step in the space sector. The auto industry has long invested in research and development in fuel cells, but this is its first general agreement to put this technology to work on the moon.

Cooperation is also in line with the broader space ambitions in Japan. The country is a founding member of Artemis Accords, a framework for geopolitical cooperation in the moon’s exploration, and the Japanese spacecraft routinely dragged on research on the international space station.

The lunar southern pole is essential to the Ethnis program of NASA partially due to the semi -continuous exposure in the region of the sun, and the vast possible warehouses of the water ice there. Power systems like Lunargrid, associated with Honda’s RFC, can open the door for more ambitious future tasks, and in the end a constant human presence on the moon’s surface.