Balerion Principal Emerson Garnett sits down with Justin Zipkin, Co-Founder & CEO of Volta Space, to discuss lunar power infrastructure. Volta Space is developing LightGrid, a satellite-based system designed to beam power from lunar orbit to assets on the surface. The company is addressing the 14-day lunar night problem by enabling landers, rovers, and sensors to operate through darkness and in permanently shadowed regions.
Timestamped Overview
00:00 – Introduction to Volta Space and the lunar energy grid
00:50 – Origin story, customer discovery, and NASA’s Watts on the Moon challenge
02:16 – Lunar night, temperature extremes, and why missions struggle beyond 14 days
03:38 – Powering permanently shadowed regions and increasing rover operating time
05:10 – Artemis infrastructure priorities, CLPS cadence, and the unresolved power gap
09:57 – LightGrid architecture, laser power beaming, and photovoltaic receivers
13:52 – Orbital energy collection, laser transmission, and constellation scalability
16:09 – Targeting safety, receiver design, and surface mass tradeoffs
21:00 – Terrestrial field demonstrations and lessons from 850-meter power beaming tests
23:05 – Blue Ghost 2 light port test and DCubed 400-watt laser demonstration
25:01 – Roadmap to operational lunar power delivery and reliability milestones
26:54 – Civil, defense, and international interest in lunar power infrastructure
29:41 – Canadian Space Agency architecture study and lunar power-system trade space
31:29 – Earth applications, power over fiber, and Arctic drone operations
35:56 – Pricing, reservations, customer planning, and lunar utility economics
40:18 – Lunar permanence, second-order economic effects, and coexistence with fission and solar
47:58 – Customer and investor engagement and closing perspective
