It’s Only a Paper Moon

One cool October morning in Cleveland I was presented with an interesting opportunity: a call for proposals for commercial lunar payloads was out, the response time frame was rapid, and the solicitation desired hardware that was nearly complete. I took the afternoon off, went for a long hike in a local park and developed an idea, later to be known as the Photovoltaic Investigation on the Lunar Surface (PILS). I will recount the story of how a handful of photovoltaics researchers developed lunar hardware to probe the interaction of solar arrays and the lunar plasma environment, and what this project means for NASA, going forward. My goal is to convey the message that the paperwork was as challenging as the research and development, but made me a better scientist. In this telling I will also present the fundamental physics of plasma interaction science, future directions in our research and also motivate why thin film solar cells may end up being the future of space power – if we can make them somewhere else.