PowerLight Technologies, a developer of laser power beaming systems, will provide critical wireless power beaming expertise, solutions, and support for the development of lunar power infrastructure, as part of Blue Origin’s award under the DARPA Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) initiative. PowerLight Technologies is teamed with Blue Origin on the scalable surface power infrastructure solution that includes generation and transmission of megawatts of electricity using lunar-sourced materials and wireless power beaming. Power beaming can provide the means for delivering power to remote devices in the early stages of lunar development and operations where efficiency of mass, deployment flexibility, and ease of implementation are valued. As those sites become fixed in place, some of those wireless power links can be replaced with dedicated cable infrastructure, and the beaming infrastructure it replaced can be redeployed. The flexibility offered by laser power beaming is expected to significantly improve or enable critical lunar operations — including not only mobile, autonomous rover operations such as those planned in permanently shadowed craters — but also power to/from orbit to the surface and between orbiting vehicles. PowerLight Technologies, the company said, is currently the only company who has developed and demonstrated commercially viable, safe wireless power beaming over long distances. For the LunA-10 project, DARPA selected 14 companies, including Blue Origin, to design new integrated system-level solutions that span multiple lunar services with the aim of enabling a lunar economy.
