NASA says it’s funding a new batch of far-out research projects, including a study evaluating how radioactive heaters can keep astronauts warm while they work on the moon.
The heating project was proposed by Zeno Power Systems, a nuclear battery company with operations in Seattle, California and Washington, D.C. It’s one of 18 projects selected for nine-month, $225,000 Phase I grants by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program. For decades, NIAC grants have helped researchers test concepts with potential space applications.
Zeno’s research project is led by A.C. Charania, the company’s senior vice president of space business development. Charania previously spent two years as NASA’s chief technologist and five years in management roles at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
The project comes with an acronym taken from J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth: EARENDIL, which stands for Extended Astronaut Radioisotope-EVA in Nighttime and Deep-Space Icy Landscapes. In “The Silmarillion,” Eärendil is a half-Elven mariner who voyaged to the Undying Lands. As described in Zeno’s proposal, EARENDIL technology would warm space voyagers while they work outside during the frigid lunar night, amid temperatures that can plunge as low as 410 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-246 degrees Celsius).
Zeno is already developing a new class of compact nuclear devices powered by the heat of radioactive decay. One type of device would convert that heat into electricity, but the device proposed for EARENDIL would function strictly as a heater rather than a battery.
