NASA’s unmanned Artemis mission to the moon was a small step toward the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars and beyond.
The second goal was to figure out how to settle and exploit the resources of the moon for research teams by the middle of the following decade.
In November 2021, while the municipal utility in Marburg, Germany, was performing scheduled maintenance on a hot water storage facility, engineers glued 18 solar panels to the outside of the main 10-meter-high cylindrical tank. It’s not the typical home for solar panels, most of which are flat, rigid silicon and glass rectangles arrayed on rooftops or in solar parks. The Marburg facility’s panels, by contrast, are ultrathin organic films made by Heliatek, a German solar company. In the past few years, Heliatek has mounted its flexible panels on the sides of office towers, the curved roofs of bus stops, and even the cylindrical shaft of an 80-meter-tall windmill. The goal: expanding solar power’s reach beyond flat land. “There is a huge market where classical photovoltaics do not work,” says Jan Birnstock, Heliatek’s chief technical officer.
Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) such as Heliatek’s are more than 10 times lighter than silicon panels and in some cases cost just half as much to produce. Some are even transparent, which has architects envisioning solar panels not just on rooftops, but incorporated into building facades, windows, and even indoor spaces. “We want to change every building into an electricity-generating building,” Birnstock says.
Heliatek’s panels are among the few OPVs in practical use, and they convert about 9% of the energy in sunlight to electricity. But in recent years, researchers around the globe have come up with new materials and designs that, in small, labmade prototypes, have reached efficiencies of nearly 20%, approaching silicon and alternative inorganic thin-film solar cells, such as those made from a mix of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). Unlike silicon crystals and CIGS, where researchers are mostly limited to the few chemical options nature gives them, OPVs allow them to tweak bonds, rearrange atoms, and mix in elements from across the periodic table. Those changes represent knobs chemists can adjust to improve their materials’ ability to absorb sunlight, conduct charges, and resist degradation. OPVs still fall short on those measures. But, “There is an enormous white space for exploration,” says Stephen Forrest, an OPV chemist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched into Earth orbit on Friday, Dec. 16, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, and engineers are working to prepare the mission to begin measuring the height of water on over 90% of Earth’s surface, providing a high-definition survey of our planet’s water for the first time.
But before it can do that, the satellite would need to unfold its large mast and antenna panels (see above) after successfully deploying the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft. The mission monitors and controls the satellite using telemetry data, but it also equipped spacecraft with four customized commercial cameras to record the action.
Continue reading “Watch the latest water satellite unfold itself in space” »
There’s still a long way to go before beaming power from space becomes a profitable venture.
Space-based solar power satellites could eventually power remote mines, but at the moment they face a major challenge.
Researchers developed a way to replace fossil fuels with a carbon-neutral product created from just solar energy, carbon dioxide and water.
EPFL
According to a report by Euronews, researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have discovered a way to create transparent photosensitizers, molecules that can be activated by light and adsorb light across the entire visible light spectrum. Previous versions of DSCs were largely dependent on direct sunlight.
For 70-year-old Lizy John from Bengaluru, Karnataka, nurturing a lush vegetable and fruit garden on her terrace has been highly rewarding and satisfying. Without a second thought, she credits her passion for farming to be the sole reason for staying healthy and energetic even at this age.
After running a snacks business for over 25 years, she decided to retire and focus on expanding her farming venture. Though there wasn’t enough space, she says that it wasn’t a challenge at all.
“Though we have a 1,200 sqft terrace, I grow my veggies in less than 1,000 sqft, as the solar panels and water tanks consume the rest of the space. But it was more than enough for me. I admit that I am happier and at peace ever since I started growing my own food at home,” Lizy tells The Better India.
Solar energy is reaching new heights faster than ever.
A tandem solar cell developed by researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has converted 32.5 percent of incident solar radiation into electrical energy, a world record. The achievement was certified by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) in Italy, a university press release said.
As the demand for renewable energy grows, researchers are looking at ways of increasing the efficiency of solar cells. This enables more energy to be harvested from the same area of land deployed to generate power. There has been significant success when halide perovskites have been used to make solar cells.
Technology developed at Argonne can help narrow the field of candidates for molten salts, a new study demonstrates.
Scientists are searching for new materials to advance the next generation of nuclear power plants. In a recent study, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory showed how artificial intelligence could help pinpoint the right types of molten salts, a key component for advanced nuclear reactors.
The ability to absorb and store heat makes molten salt important to clean energy and national climate goals. Molten salts can serve as both coolant and fuel in nuclear power reactors that generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. They can also store large amounts of energy, which is increasingly needed on an electric grid with fluctuating sources such as wind and solar power.
