Many products we take for granted today such as LED lighting, or memory foam came to us courtesy of research done for the U.S. space program by NASA. Perhaps a breakthrough in energy storage technology will result from NASA’s significant investments to achieve safe and affordable deep space exploration.
The development of high-energy storage devices will reduce the mass required to store electrical power in space and better enable the agency’s future robotic and human exploration missions
NASA’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program investigates novel ideas and approaches that have the potential to revolutionize future space missions and provide solutions to significant national needs.
The program focuses on taking technologies from proof of concept through component testing by investing in specific technology areas through component and subsystem testing. GCD work is done primarily in the laboratory with ground testing instead of space work.
NASA’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program has selected two proposals for Phase II awards targeted toward developing new energy storage technologies to replace the battery systems currently used by America’s space program.
The selected awardees, and their project titles, are:
- Amprius Inc. of Sunnyvale, California: Silicon Anode Based Cells for High Specific Energy Li + Systems
- University of Maryland, College Park: Garnet Electrolyte Based Safe, Lithium-Sulfur Energy Storage
NASA’s technology roadmaps and strategic investment plans highlight these advanced technologies as critical to the agency’s journey to Mars and future exploration. According to the National Research Council’s NASA Space Technology Roadmaps and Priorities, there is a need to increase available power and eliminate the constraint of power availability for space missions.
The selected proposals will help improve energy storage with reliable power systems that can survive the wide range of NASA missions in harsh space environments, while cutting their mass by 50 percent or more.
Phase I awards were approximately $250,000, providing four awardees with the funding needed to conduct an eight-month component test and analysis phase. Phase II is an engineering hardware phase that provides as much as to $1 million per award for 12 months, and Phase III will consist of the prototype hardware development, with up to $2 million per award for 18 months.
Proposals for Phase II were received from federally funded research and development centers, universities and industry. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, manages the GCD program for STMD.
ST Staff Writers
This post was prepared by Solar Thermal Magazine staff.