NGK’s NAS battery installation at Misasa Deep Space Station (MDSS), Nagano, Japan. Image: NGK.
Ground operations for the aviation and space exploration sectors will be powered with the help of non-lithium battery technologies in the Netherlands and Japan.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s ground station, MDSS, has been equipped with a sodium-sulfur (NAS) battery-based energy storage system, provided by Japanese company NGK Insulators.
MDSS is deep in the mountains of the northern Japanese prefecture Nagano, hosting one of the world’s largest antenna systems and communicating with space probes for over 30 years.
Upgrades to its key equipment, such as fitting a new antenna with better reception capacity to help track today’s more advanced space exploration missions, began in 2021 and will be complete in 2024.
As part of that effort, NGK Insulators,…