Solar Panels from Moondust

From the New Scientist, a press release describes production of solar cell substrate (basically glass) purely from material comparable to that on the surface of the moon, and then deposition of what sounds like a thin-film silicon cell on that substrate in a vacuum chamber with techniques that should be available to a lunar robot.

The resulting cell was only 1% efficient, but this seems a useful start to demonstrating the processes needed to develop Criswell's Lunar Solar Power system, to use lunar materials for an Earth-satellite solar power system, or at least to provide power derived in part from local materials, for a moon base.

More discussion of this on sciscoop.

Created: 2005-01-21 16:25:54 by Arthur Smith
Modified: 2005-01-21 17:40:16 by Test user