• Question: could we put solar farms on the moon?

    Asked by murial to Andy, Dwaine, Natt, Priya, Tatiana on 22 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Scott

      Andrew Scott answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      Dear Bucko,

      I think you could, but only on the half of the moon that the sun shines on. The big problem would be getting the energy back from the moon. Maybe if we could develop batteries that can store very large amounts of energy in a very small, light package. But then we might have huge disasters if the space ship carrying the batteries crashed, releasing all the energy in the batteries. We might also be able to beam the energy back down to earth via lasers, but there are also safety problems with that too!

    • Photo: Tatiana Trantidou

      Tatiana Trantidou answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Very good question! In fact some japanese scientists are planning to put a “solar belt” around the moon that can send the energy to the earth in the form of microwaves and lasers, which will then be converted to electricity. We’ll have to wait and see if this happens and how efficient it is.

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