Plans afoot to build lighthouses on Moon for future lunar missions

The Moon has fascinated humans for centuries, yet it is only in modern times that special explorations are being carried out to study the physiological aspects of the celestial body, thanks to the advancement of science.

From robots to human landings, in the last 50 years, astronomers have launched several lunar missions in a bid to study the evolution of the solar system and in particular, the existence of human beings.

Now, plans are afoot to build giant lighthouses on the Moon that will not only illuminate the local terrain during lunar light but will also serve as a single-point infrastructure for power storage, communications, navigation, and even surveillance.

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The LUNARSABER

This endeavour is being carried out by Honeybee Robotics. They call it the Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution, or LUNARSABER.

This tower of power is expected to be nearly 330 feet (100 meters) tall, with the capacity to scale over 650 feet (200 meters) in height above the lunar landscape to boost its service range.

The tower would be a deployable structure topped by solar panels that integratepower storage and transferand communications, into a single infrastructure, as part of the company’s plan to develop a lunar economy.

"LUNARSABER can be above the lunar horizon and always see the sun if we're in the south pole of the moon," Kris Zacny, vice president of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California, told Space.com.

Moon to be illuminated throughout the year

"Right on top of the structure, there are cameras, and communications systems. We have a flood light to illuminate areas for rovers."

"You put one or two of them at the south pole of the moon and you cover the entire area. It's your lighthouse," he said.

Giving more details about the project, Vishnu Sanigepalli, Honeybee's principal investigator of LUNARSABER, said that it was speculated that the poles of the Moon would have peaks of eternal light where deploying a solar panel would help generate power throughout the year.

However, after NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) started to map out the Moon, it was discovered that there are no locations near the poles that receive sunlight consistently throughout the year, he said.

"There has been a lot of analysis done using the lunar topography where it was discovered that rims of craters near the South Pole have long lunar days due to their height, just not 100 per cent," Sanigepalli was quoted as saying.

(With inputs from agencies)