Resilience, safety, and flexibility. These are the guiding values for the collaboration between Enel and Thales Alenia Space on a challenging yet fascinating, forward-thinking project to provide energy to the future lunar base. Together they are working toward advancing ready-to-deploy technologies to meet the long-term needs when human settlements on the Moon become a reality.
This chapter discusses how collaboration helps merging respective competencies on power generation and production with deep knowledge of space infrastructures to resolve the particular challenges posed by the environmental conditions of lunar power plant systems. The future plant must be resilient to extreme environmental conditions (+/-150°C, radiations, micrometeoroids, lunar dust); reliable for long periods to ensure astronaut safety; and flexible enough to be updated over time. Maximizing these characteristics will also contribute to accelerating a more sustainable and innovative energy transition here on Earth.
