NASA Is Building Batteries That Survive the Moon's Deep Freeze

NASA is testing solid-state Batteries That Survive the Moon's Deep Freeze, a new generation of power cells designed to keep working where ordinary batteries give up entirely. In recent laboratory trials, prototype cells kept operating at temperatures far below anything a phone or electric car battery could handle, a step toward powering the agency's long-planned return to the lunar surface.

The problem is brutal and simple. At the Moon's south pole, nighttime temperatures plunge toward minus three hundred twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to freeze the liquid inside a conventional lithium-ion cell and damage it. Heat is no kinder: daytime highs can climb past the boiling point of water. A battery for lunar work must survive both extremes and then fire up on demand, powering everything from an astronaut's emergency kit to a rover exploring the darkest craters.

The effort is called SPEARS, short for Solid Power for Extreme Environment Adaptability and Resilience in Space, and it attacks the weak point directly. Traditional batteries shuttle charge through a liquid electrolyte; the project's cells replace that liquid with a solid ceramic- or polymer-based material that cannot freeze or boil away. In thermal vacuum testing at the agency's Langley Research Center in Virginia, small prototype cells operated well down to minus sixty degrees Celsius, and still functioned, with slightly reduced performance, at minus eighty. Then came the endurance check: after exposure to a swing from one hundred degrees Celsius all the way down to minus one hundred seventy, the cells showed no damage, according to NASA's report on the tests.

Survive first, work when warmed

The design makes a deliberate trade. For Batteries That Survive the Moon's Deep Freeze, the trick is that even these cells cannot generate power at the very coldest extreme, but because the solid electrolyte does not freeze like a liquid, nothing breaks. A small heater can then warm the cell back to its working temperature when power is needed, instead of a heavy system keeping it warm around the clock. Lighter thermal hardware means lighter spacecraft, lower costs, and longer missions.

"Batteries have become an important part of our lives here on Earth, which enable our laptops, cell phones, power tools, and even our vehicles," said Donald Dornbusch, the principal investigator for the project at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where the work is led. "We will need them on the Moon, too, and these batteries will be required to operate reliably and safely in this harsh environment. That's why we're working on this technology."

The chemistry itself is tunable. "Just like the chemistry in your earbuds is different from the chemistry in your phone, which is different from the chemistry in your car, all these chemistries can still function with a solid electrolyte," said Yi Lin, the project's testing and research lead at Langley. "We can tune for energy, tune for power, tune for durability, depending on the application." Lin also said the team believes it can improve performance and widen the operating range further in the coming years.

From the Moon back to Earth

The near-term customers are all off-planet. The cells are aimed at drills that must run in permanently shadowed craters, rovers, emergency power packs for astronauts, and long-duration scientific instruments, all under the umbrella of the Artemis campaign to build a sustained human presence on the Moon. The project, which began in 2026, is still in its technology-development phase, and the agency's Ames Research Center in California is developing flight hardware such as test boards and electronics to get the cells ready for trials in actual space environments.

The Earth-side pitch is just as broad. The researchers note the same solid-state design could eventually serve automobiles, phones, communication devices, and drones, anything that needs a portable power supply without the fire risk that liquid electrolytes carry. That promise deserves a caveat: these are small laboratory prototypes, not products, and the reduced output at the coldest tested temperature shows there is real performance left to engineer.

Still, the direction of travel is clear. Better batteries have quietly decided the pace of exploration before, from the rovers that outlived their warranties to the phones in every pocket. The next leap may come from a cell built to nap through a lunar night and wake up ready to work. For more on batteries closer to home, see GenZ NewZ's report on phone batteries getting a serious upgrade, and for the Moon mission these cells could one day support, read about Japan's sample mission to a Martian moon.