Space Resources students Kenneth Liang and Mark Tolton were one of four teams selected by NASA to advance to the final level of the agency’s Watts on the Moon Challenge, which seeks solutions to transmit and store energy on the lunar surface. Ken and Mark formed Orbital Mining Corporation last year as part of the Innov8X course and have advanced through various levels of the competition to get to this final stage. Their project consists of bringing energy distribution to the Moon by creating a DC-to-DC converter system that can make it through the cold darkness of a sunless lunar night. Their high-voltage system, which operates using a direct current wired transmission system and a lithium-ion battery bank, will need to mitigate vacuum arcing to ensure long-term success.
