ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | MAY 2026 EMERGING TECHNOLOGY 12 NASA FOCUSES ON MOON BASE, NUCLEAR PROPULSION Administrators and scientists at NASA recently announced several new and ambitious goals. The initiatives build on recent updates to the Artemis program, including standardizing the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket configuration, adding an additional mission in 2027, and undertaking at least one surface landing every year going forward. Artemis III, scheduled for 2027, will focus on testing integrated systems and operational capabilities in Earth orbit ahead of the Artemis IV lunar landing. Looking beyond Artemis V, NASA announced on March 24 it will begin to incorporate more commercially acquired and reusable hardware to support more frequent and affordable crewed missions to the lunar surface, initially targeting landings every six months. To achieve a lasting human presence on the moon, NASA also announced a phased approach to building a lunar base. As part of this strategy, the agency intends to pause the Gateway program in its current form and instead focus on infrastructure that enables sustained lunar surface operations. Despite challenges with some existing hardware, NASA will repurpose certain equipment and coordinate with international partners to achieve these objectives. In addition to these moon-focused missions, the agency announced a major advancement in bringing nuclear power and propulsion from the lab to space. NASA will launch Space Reactor-1 Freedom— the first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft—to Mars before the end of 2028, to demonstrate advanced nuclear electric propulsion in deep space. nasa. gov/ignition. SOLAR BATTERY STORES SUNLIGHT, RELEASES HYDROGEN Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Ulm University, both in Germany, developed a material that can store energy from sunlight for several days and then release it in the form of hydrogen by simply pressing a button. “You can think of it as a combination of a solar cell and a battery at the molecular level,” explains Ulm professor Sven Rau. A water-soluble, redox-active copolymer is used as a material for temporary energy or electron storage. These copolymers form a stable framework and have been equipped with functional units that have certain chemical-physical properties, in this case a reinforced redox activity. The new system achieves a charging efficiency of over 80% and maintains this state for several days. By adding an acid and a hydrogen evolution catalyst, the electrons stored in the polymer are combined with protons and this process produces hydrogen on demand. The efficiency is astonishingly high at 72%, say researchers. Another advantage is that this process can take place in the dark and does not require sunshine. If the solution is subsequently neutralized, the system can be exposed to light again and recharged. “The project is also of scientific significance because it combines very different concepts from the field of chemistry that otherwise have few points of contact, namely macromolecular polymer chemistry and photocatalysis,” says Rau. www.uni-ulm.de. Undergraduate students at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., will be able to major in artificial intelligence (AI) starting this fall. The new major will include fundamentals such as machine learning and cognitive modeling as well as humanrobot interaction and how AI intersects with law and society, among other skills and topics. northwestern.edu. BRIEF Artist’s concept of Phase 3 of NASA’s Moon Base. Courtesy of NASA. Catalyst solutions with luminescent ruthenium dye, which are irradiated with visible light in the reactor. Courtesy of Elvira Eberhardt/Ulm University.
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