One local engineer is shooting for the moon, and with any luck, his design will land him a spot in lunar history.
NASA has contracted Gary Wood of Athens-based Sunpower, Inc. to design a power conversion unit that may one day generate electricity for a lunar outpost.
Sunpower, Inc. is one of two companies contracted for a converter design, said Lee Mason, principal investigator for NASA's Fission Surface Power Technology project. The power converter would be just one component of the fission-powered system being developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, he said.
The converter is basically the heart of the system
said Wood, technical fellow and principal investigator for Sunpower's project. It converts the heat from the nuclear reactor system into electricity.
Sunpower is receiving $742,000 in funding from NASA to develop the converter design, Wood said.
The design concept is a dual-opposed, free-piston Stirling engine, Wood said. It uses two opposed piston engines coupled to alternators that produce six kilowatts each, for a total of 12 kilowatts of power.
NASA is hoping to create a system capable of providing 48 kilowatts of power so they're going to use four of these units Wood said.
Also contracted by NASA, Barber Nichols Inc. of Arvada, Colo., is developing a closed Brayton cycle engine that uses a high-speed turbine and compressor coupled to a rotary alternator to produce 12 kilowatts of energy, according to a NASA press release.
While solar energy is the main technology being pursued for use at the lunar outpost, NASA is working toward creating a power system that will provide continuous electricity, regardless of sunlight in harsh environments, Mason said.
One of the reasons to consider nuclear technology is that it isn't limited by solar availability
Mason said. It can store power for use during long periods of darkness, he added.
The goal is to have a flight-ready power system for a mission by the early 2020s, though this might change as a result of budget adjustments, Mason said. Currently the fission project receives $10 million each year.
The contract with Sunpower is just one step toward the fission project's goal to perform a non-nuclear unit demonstration within five years, Mason said.
Sunpower will present its design to NASA at the end of March and will find out if it has been selected by the end of the summer, Wood said.
If our design is selected and we're awarded phase two of the projects
then we'll move on to developing the hardware
Wood said. The converter would be developed here in Athens and then tested at NASA Glenn.
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