How to survive a Lunar night

In the frame of the recent worldwide activities of Lunar research, including various studies for surface stations, the aspect of longevity of such stations has been identified as a particular technical challenge. The reason for this lies in the long (about 14 days) and cold Lunar night during which it is non-trivial to keep spacecraft systems alive and sensitive equipment within an acceptable temperature range.The following paper analyzes and compares various concepts to survive Lunar night, both with and without radioisotope heater technology.The latter normally implies the use of highly toxic material (typically plutonium), which is politically problematic and a driver for cost and safety procedures.Concepts without radioisotope heating need to foresee special measures, like extremely efficient thermal insulation or sub-surface positioning of all temperature sensitive components.Special emphasis has been taken on the thermal analysis of a penetrator-type surface station. The relevant issues are discussed and results for day–night cycles are presented, assuming a typical set of engineering parameters. This concept appears to be the easiest to implement from a thermal point of view, if the use of radioisotope heaters has to be avoided.