{"id":131783,"date":"2021-12-04T15:22:20","date_gmt":"2021-12-04T23:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/tiny-crystal-of-energy-is-a-promising-future-source-of-power-on-the-moon"},"modified":"2021-12-04T15:22:20","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T23:22:20","slug":"tiny-crystal-of-energy-is-a-promising-future-source-of-power-on-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/tiny-crystal-of-energy-is-a-promising-future-source-of-power-on-the-moon","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Crystal of Energy Is a Promising Future Source of Power on the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tiny-crystal-of-energy-is-a-promising-future-source-of-power-on-the-moon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This crystal of iron pyrite, just four hundredths of a millimeter in size, could function as the light absorbing layer of a tiny solar cell \u2013 potentially a promising future source of power on the Moon.<\/p>\n<p>Working with Estonia\u2019s Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), ESA has studied the production of sandpaper-like rolls of such microcrystals as the basis of monograin-layer solar cells.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re looking at these microcrystals in the context of future lunar settlement,\u201d explains ESA advanced manufacturing engineer Advenit Makaya. \u201cFuture Moon bases will need to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Enabling_Support\/Preparing_for_the_Future\/Discovery_and_Preparation\/Off-Earth_manufacturing_using_local_resources_to_build_a_new_home\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener\">\u2018live off the land\u2019<\/a> in order to be sustainable, and the iron and sulfur needed to produce pyrite could be retrieved from the lunar surface.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This crystal of iron pyrite, just four hundredths of a millimeter in size, could function as the light absorbing layer of a tiny solar cell \u2013 potentially a promising future source of power on the Moon. Working with Estonia\u2019s Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), ESA has studied the production of sandpaper-like rolls of such microcrystals [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1633,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-power","category-space","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}