Firefly books Zeno Power radioisotope heater for 2028 lunar night demo
Firefly Aerospace · Zeno Power
Firefly will fly Zeno Power's radioisotope heater unit on a Blue Ghost mission to test surviving the 14-day lunar night.
what happened
Firefly Aerospace announced a commercial payload agreement with Zeno Power Systems to fly Zeno's "Survive-the-Night Package," a 5-watt americium-241 radioisotope heater unit, on a Firefly Blue Ghost lunar lander mission targeting a landing no earlier than 2028. The mission flies under NASA's CLPS CS-8 task order; the RHU will keep its own systems running through the 14-day lunar night while the rest of the lander's payloads go into low-power "monument mode," per Firefly and Payload.
why it matters
Surviving the lunar night without solar power is one of the standing barriers to longer-duration Moon missions; a working demo could let Firefly sell extended-stay missions and give NASA's CLPS and Moon Base plans a commercial power option beyond one-lunar-day landers. Firefly said the results will feed into future missions.
for who
Lunar lander and payload providers
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Firefly Aerospace, Zeno Power
- Category
- science
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 5 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-08-19
- Published
- 2026-08-19 17:29 UTC