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Zeno Power strikes a deal to recycle radioactive material

Aerial view of Oak Ridge National Laboratory
An aerial view shows the main campus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. (ORNL Photo)

Zeno Power says it has gained access to radioactive material destined for its first full-scale radioisotope power systems under the terms of a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy.

The transfer of the material from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee benefits Zeno as well as the Department of Energy: Zeno — which has offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C. — gets the strontium-90 fuel that it needs for its next-generation RPS. At the same time, the DOE gets an opportunity to put a decades-old RPS to good use instead of putting it through a costly disposal process.

“This transfer highlights another unique approach our team has taken to accelerate environmental cleanup at Oak Ridge,” Jay Mullis, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, said today in a news release. “This is a win-win scenario that’s removing a significant source of radioactivity at a savings to taxpayers, while also supporting nuclear innovation.”

Radioisotope power systems, also known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTGs, have been used for decades to provide off-grid power for space missions and other applications. Such devices convert the heat generated by radioactive decay into electricity. Plutonium-238 is often used for space applications, but Zeno is working on a system that uses strontium-90 as an alternative heat source.

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Scientists visit the kind of lake where life may have arisen

Scientists walking across Last Chance Lake
Researchers walk across Last Chance Lake’s crusty surface in September 2022. (UW Photo / Zack Cohen)

Several years ago, scientists at the University of Washington theorized that key ingredients for life could have built up billions of years ago in special kinds of environments known as soda lakes.

At the time, their hypothesis was based on previously published research, computer modeling and lab experiments. But now the same scientists say they’ve found a shallow lake that just might fit the requirements — and it happens to be just a few hundred miles north of their home base in Seattle.

Their findings, focusing on Last Chance Lake in British Columbia, were published this month in Communications Earth & Environment, an open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal.

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Zeno and Westinghouse team up on nuclear batteries

Illustration: Cutaway view of Zeno Power's radioisotope power system
An artist’s conception shows a cutaway view of Zeno’s radioisotope power system. (Zeno Power Illustration)

Zeno Power says it has selected Westinghouse Electric Co. to process the radioisotopes for its heat sources — creating a partnership that adds a key puzzle piece to its plan for a new type of radioisotope power system, or RPS.

“Working with Westinghouse, we will build the nuclear hardware for our RPSs to provide reliable power in the most critical domains of the 21st century — from the depths of the oceans to the surface of the moon,” Zeno co-founder and CEO Tyler Bernstein said today in a news release.

Radioisotope power systems that convert heat into electricity for off-grid power have been used for decades — for example, for space missions ranging from the Apollo moonshots to the Curiosity rover mission to Mars and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Those systems have typically used plutonium-238, but Zeno is working on systems that make use of other radioisotopes such as strontium-90.

Strontium-90, which is created as a byproduct in nuclear fission reactors, can be an abundant fuel for power-generating systems. Existing strontium-based power systems tend to be bulky, however. Zeno’s design could generate more power with less bulk, opening the way for a wider range of applications.

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Lander falls back to Earth after missing out on the moon

View of crescent Earth from Astrobotic Peregrine lander in space
One of the last pictures taken by a camera on the Peregrine lander shows a crescent Earth. (Astrobotic Photo)

Ten days after its launch, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander fell back to Earth, ending a trip to the moon’s orbital distance and back that was doomed by a propellant leak.

The mission began auspiciously on the night of Jan. 7-8 with a seemingly successful liftoff from Florida on United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur rocket, powered by Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines. But hours after launch, the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic team detected a problem with the propulsion system. So much propellant was lost that the team had to rule out a moon landing.

After days of troubleshooting, Astrobotic and NASA determined that the best course was to send the 8-foot-wide robotic spacecraft on a looping orbit that went out more than 240,000 miles from Earth — and then came back for a controlled atmospheric re-entry over a remote area of the South Pacific.

Astrobotic said telemetry received during Peregrine’s descent suggested that the spacecraft broke up during re-entry at 1:04 p.m. PT Jan. 18.

Today, Space-Track.org said the U.S. Space Command confirmed the spacecraft’s re-entry. “That’s certainly good to hear,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told reporters during a news briefing.

“Peregrine Mission One has concluded,” Astrobotic said in a final mission update. “We look to the future and our next mission to the moon, Griffin Mission One. All of the hard-earned experience from the past 10 days in space, along with the preceding years of designing, building and testing Peregrine, will directly inform Griffin and our future missions.”

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Space Force’s venture fund boosts space startups

Illustration: Gravitics space station module in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Gravitics’ space module in orbit. (Gravitics Illustration)

SpaceWERX, which essentially serves as a venture fund for the U.S. Space Force, has awarded contracts worth as much as $1.7 million each to 18 companies — including three startups headquartered in the Seattle area.

The Washington state awardees are Marysville-based Gravitics, which is working on next-generation space station modules; Bothell-based Portal Space Systems, which is focusing on systems for in-space mobility and orbital debris removal; and Tukwila-based Starfish Space, which is developing spacecraft and software for on-orbit satellite servicing.

The awards were made through the 2023 SpaceWERX Tactically Responsive Space Challenge, conducted in partnership with Space Safari. The challenge is meant to support cutting-edge concepts that could enable the Space Force to respond more rapidly and flexibly to emerging on-orbit threats by 2026.

In a LinkedIn posting, SpaceWERX said 302 proposals were submitted in response to a solicitation issued in August. The winners will be fast-tracked into Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contracts, each of which calls for up to $1.7 million to be paid out over the course of a 15-month period of performance.

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First Mode downsizes and revises its clean tech plans

First Mode hybrid diesel-electric truck during test drive
First Mode’s hybrid diesel-electric truck takes on its first tests in Centralia, Wash. (First Mode via LinkedIn)

First Mode says it’s cutting back on its workforce as it adjusts to the market demand for heavy trucks that rely less on fossil fuels.

The workforce in the U.S., which currently amounts to about 240 people, is being immediately reduced by about 20%, First Mode CEO Julian Soles said in an email sent to employees today. Most of those employees are in Washington state — for example, at First Mode’s Seattle HQ and at its proving grounds in Centralia, Wash.

About 125 additional employees work in non-U.S. offices. Soles said operations in Australia, Britain and South Africa “may also possibly experience redundancies,” while operations in Chile are “not currently impacted.”

Despite the cutbacks, First Mode is continuing with plans to retrofit mining trucks to reduce their carbon footprint and address the climate challenge. “This is the year that we deliver commercial products to our customer sites. It is also when we finalise our transformation from an engineering services firm to a global decarbonisation product company,” Soles wrote, using British spellings.

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PowerLight looks into beaming power on the moon

Illustration: Power-beaming system on the moon
An artist’s conception shows a beamed-power system operating on the moon. (Illustration via PowerLight)

Kent, Wash.-based PowerLight Technologies says it’s joined a team headed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to design a power beaming system that might someday charge up robots on the moon.

The effort is being funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its LunA-10 program, which supports concepts for future lunar infrastructure projects. DARPA selected 14 industry teams, including Blue Origin’s team, to receive up to $1 million each for studies that are due this spring.

Blue Origin and PowerLight are focusing on a system that could generate power for lunar operations — perhaps using solar cells manufactured on the moon — and then transmit that power to remote locations via laser light.

The DARPA LunA-10 study takes its name from the goal of advancing a lunar architecture for infrastructure over a 10-year time frame. Hardware development isn’t the point of the study. Instead, DARPA is interested in developing ideas that could give rise to future commercial applications on the moon — and perhaps tech spin-offs here on Earth.

PowerLight, which was known as LaserMotive when it was founded in 2007, is developing laser-based power transmission systems for a variety of closer-to-home applications, including over-the-air power beaming systems as well as power over fiber-optic cable for telecom equipment, drones and hard-to-reach installations on land and underwater.

The company made an early splash in 2009 when it won a $900,000 prize in NASA’s Power Beaming Challenge, so its involvement in a space-related project marks something of a return to its roots.

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Astrobotic admits moon lander mission will fall short

Peregrine lander during preparations for launch
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander is shown during last month’s preparations for launch. (United Launch Alliance Photo)

Astrobotic says that it’s given up on its plan to put a commercial spacecraft safely on the moon’s surface, due to a propellant leak that will soon leave its Peregrine lander without fuel.

The Pittsburgh-based company said there was no indication that the leak occurred as the result of the lander’s launch by United Launch Alliance. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket made its first liftoff over the weekend with the aid of BE-4 engines provided by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

The Astrobotic team’s working theory is that a valve between the propulsion system’s oxidizer and a store of helium that served to pressurize the oxidizer tank failed to reseal after it was actuated during spacecraft initialization.

“This led to a rush of high-pressure helium that spiked the pressure in the oxidizer tank beyond its operating limit and subsequently ruptured the tank,” Astrobotic said today in mission update.

Because of the resulting leak, mission controllers had a hard time keeping Peregrine’s solar arrays pointed toward the sun — but today Astrobotic said “the team was able to update the control algorithm and fix this issue.” The lander’s batteries are currently fully charged, and onboard cameras are sending pictures back down to Earth.

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Propulsion failure puts moon lander’s mission at risk

Illustration: Peregrine lander in space with Earth in background
An artist’s conception shows Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander with Earth in the background. (Astrobotic via YouTube)

Hours after the launch of its commercial moon lander, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic reported a failure within the robotic spacecraft’s propulsion system that could rule out a soft landing.

“Unfortunately, it appears the failure within the propulsion system is causing a critical loss of propellant,” Astrobotic said today in a mission update.posted to X / Twitter. “The team is working to try and stabilize this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture. We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”

In an earlier update, Astrobotic said the propulsion problem could threaten the “ability to soft land on the moon.” NASA is paying Astrobotic $108 million to have its Peregrine spacecraft carry a suite of science instruments to the lunar surface, and more than a dozen other payloads are going along for the ride.

The setback followed a picture-perfect launch of the 8-foot-wide lander from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida overnight. It was the first liftoff for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket — and the first launch for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines, which Jeff Bezos’ space venture provided for the first-stage booster.

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Moon lander gets a lift from Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin

Vulcan liftoff from launch pad
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad. (NASA via YouTube)

Update: Hours after launch, Astrobotic reported a failure in the Peregrine lander’s propulsion system that could rule out a soft landing on the moon.

United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off for the first time tonight, making use of booster engines built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to launch what could be the first mission to put a commercially built lander safely on the moon.

At the end of a seemingly trouble-free countdown, the rocket rose from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Jan. 8 (11:18 p.m. PT Jan. 7). It was the first-ever launch for the Vulcan rocket, and the first-ever use of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines.

Two BE-4 engines, fueled by liquefied natural gas, powered the first-stage booster spaceward with an assist from two side boosters. “We’re seeing excellent performance out of the BE-4’s,” ULA flight commentator Rob Gannon said.

About five minutes after liftoff, Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage separated from the first-stage booster and carried Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander into orbit. Spacecraft separation took place 50 minutes after launch, sending Peregrine on the next leg of its trek to the moon.

“Yee-haw! I am so thrilled,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said after separation. Soon after Bruno’s joyful whoop, Astrobotic confirmed contact with the lander.

“Big kudos and congrats to the whole team!” Bezos said in an Instagram post.

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