Firefly and Zeno Power to Fly Americium-241 Heater Unit on Blue Ghost Lunar Mission
Firefly Aerospace and Zeno Power Systems have signed a commercial payload agreement to carry a radioisotope heating unit designed for the cold of the lunar night on a Blue Ghost mission to the Moon, potentially as soon as 2028, World Nuclear News reported.
The payload is Zeno Power Systems' Survive-the-Night Package, built around a 5 watts thermal americium-241 radioisotope heater unit (RHU), according to World Nuclear News. The Firefly mission carrying it is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028.
The flight falls under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
The isotope choice marks the departure from prior practice. Traditional RHUs have typically used plutonium-238 to generate about 1 watt, but that isotope is now in short supply, World Nuclear News reported. The americium-241 unit is rated at five times that thermal output.
Heat, not electricity, is the constraint the package addresses. Lunar landers without a thermal source lose function once the sun sets. Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 completed more than 14 days of surface operations during daylight and just over 5 hours of operations into the lunar night, according to World Nuclear News.
Source: world-nuclear-news.org (opens in a new tab)1 sourcePermalink