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For the past decades spaceflight has been a driver for technology development in various fields, e.g. generation of electrical power, and computers. Human spaceflight missions, require resources typically scarce (e.g. oxygen) and are usually transferred along with the crew to the respective mission target. Future long-term missions aim beyond Low Earth Orbit (i.e. Moon and Mars), necessitating advances especially in closed-loop life-support systems to guarantee mission autonomy. This requires careful handling of the resources, i.e. minimizing waste and where possible harvesting resources in situ. Similarly, on Earth a sustainable way of life requires careful handling of resources. This paper discusses how both pathways relate to each other and how “settling” Earth sustainably and settling in any space location do not differ in their basic paradigms. It is shown how spaceflight has had an impact on sustainability in the past, which technologies are developed for human spaceflight and how they can be applied on Earth to improve sustainability. Finally, a research infrastructure is presented, which can conduct research on closed-loop technologies, immediately benefiting space and terrestrial applications. This incubator is divided into separate functional modules, which allow testing of technology components. These components can be exchanged to test various permutations of technologies. It is recommended to exploit synergy effects between activities concerning human spaceflight and sustainability by intertwining and coordinating these actions. The technological improvement driven by spaceflight programs can be used to drive sustainability as well.

As research and development of renewable and clean energy based systems is advancing rapidly, the nonlinear source emulator (NSE) is becoming very essential for testing of maximum power point trackers or downstream converters. Renewable and clean energy sources play important roles in both terrestrial and nonterrestrial applications. However, most existing NSEs have only been concerned with simulating energy sources in terrestrial applications, which may not be fast enough for testing of nonterrestrial applications. In this paper, a high-bandwidth NSE is developed that is able to simulate the behaviors of a typical nonlinear source under different critical conditions that can happen during their operations. The proposed 200-W NSE, which consists of a fourth-order output filter buck converter and a novel nonlinear small-signal reference generator, can quickly react not only to an instantaneous change in the input source but also to a load step between nominal and open circuit. Moreover, all of these operation modes have a very fast settling time of only 10 $\mu$ s, which is hundreds of times faster than that of existing works. This attribute allows for higher speed and a more efficient maximum power point tracking algorithm. The proposed NSE, therefore, offers a superior dynamic performance among devices of the same kind.

Moon4You is an initiative led by the Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO, with partners from industry and universities in the Netherlands that aims to provide a combined Raman/LIBS instrument as scientific payload for lunar exploration missions, and specifically for Odyssey Moon's MoonOne mission, slated for launch in the second half of 2012. It is the first time that Raman spectroscopy and LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) are combined into a single miniaturised instrument with minimum mass, volume and use of resources and can deliver data-products almost instantly. These characteristics make it the next-generation instrument for mineralogical and elemental (atomic) characterisation of lunar soil and rock samples, as well as for a host of other planetary exploration and terrestrial applications. This instrument would be the first Dutch 'footprint' on the surface of the Moon. We believe we will obtain the necessary investments for the Moon4You programme from the private sector by advocating the projected high media visibility of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, the potential of the combined Raman/LIBS technology for a large range of Space and on-Earth applications and the inspiration that the Moon4You programme will deliver for science education in the Netherlands. Copyright © 2009 International Astronautical Federation.

Moon4You is an initiative led by the Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO, with partners from industry and universities in the Netherlands that aims to provide a combined Raman/LIBS instrument as scientific payload for lunar exploration missions, and specifically for Odyssey Moon's MoonOne mission, slated for launch in the second half of 2012. It is the first time that Raman spectroscopy and LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) are combined into a single miniaturised instrument with minimum mass, volume and use of resources and can deliver data-products almost instantly. These characteristics make it the next-generation instrument for mineralogical and elemental (atomic) characterisation of lunar soil and rock samples, as well as for a host of other planetary exploration and terrestrial applications. This instrument would be the first Dutch 'footprint' on the surface of the Moon. We believe we will obtain the necessary investments for the Moon4You programme from the private sector by advocating the projected high media visibility of the Google Lunar X PRIZE, the potential of the combined Raman/LIBS technology for a large range of Space and on-Earth applications and the inspiration that the Moon4You programme will deliver for science education in the Netherlands. Copyright © 2009 International Astronautical Federation.

The paper reviews the history, the present status and possible future developments of photovoltaic (PV) materials for terrestrial applications. After a brief history and introduction of the photovoltaic effect theoretical requirements for the optimal performance of materials for pn-junction solar cells are discussed. Most important are efficiency, long-term stability and, not to be neglected, lowest possible cost. Today the market is dominated by crystalline silicon in its multi crystalline and monocrystalline form. The physical and technical limitations of this material are discussed. Although crystalline silicon is not the optimal material from a solid state physics point of view it dominates the market and will continue to do this for the next 5-10 years. Because of its importance a considerable part of this review deals with materials aspects of crystalline silicon. For reasons of cost only multicrystalline silicon and monocrystalline Czochralski (Cz) crystals are used in practical cells. Light induced instability in this Cz-material has recently been investigated and ways to eliminate this effect have been devised. For future large scale production of crystalline silicon solar cells development of a special solar grade silicon appears necessary. Ribbon growth is a possibility to avoid the costly sawing process. A very vivid R&D area is thin-film crystalline silicon (about 5-30 mu m active layer thickness) which would avoid the crystal growing and sawing processes. The problems arising for this material are: assuring adequate light absorption, assuring good crystal quality and purity of the films, and finding a substrate that fulfills all requirements. Three approaches have emerged: high- temperature, low-temperature and transfer technique. Genuine thin-film materials are characterized by a direct band structure which gives them very high light absorption. Therefore, these materials have a thickness of only one micron or less. The oldest such material is amorphous silicon which is the second most important material today. It is mainly used in consumer products but is on the verge to also penetrate the power market. Other strong contenders are chalcogenides like copper indium diselenide (CIS) and cadmium telluride. The interest has expanded from CuInSe/sub 2/, to CuGaSe/sub 2/, CuInS/sub 2/ and their multinary alloys Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)/sub 2/. The two deposition techniques are either separate deposition of the components followed by annealing on one hand or coevaporation. Laboratory efficiencies for small area devices are approaching 19% and large area modules have reached 12%. Pilot production of CIS-modules has started in the US and Germany. Cadmium telluride solar cells also offer great promise. They have only slightly lower efficiency and are also at the start of production. In the future other materials and concepts can be expected to come into play. Some of these are: dye sensitized cells, organic solar cells and various concentrating systems including III/V-tandem cells. Theoretical materials that have not yet been realized are Auger generation material and intermediate metallic band material.