Surviving the night requires heat and electricity, and NASA officials say nuclear power is one of the most attractive solutions to this problem.

Zeno Power's first full-scale radioisotope power systems will be fuelled by strontium-90 material recycled from a legacy radioisotope generator under a new public-private partnership with the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. The company has also announced a partnership with Westinghouse to fabricate the heat sources for its systems.

Nuclear energy company Zeno Power announced a major step forward on Friday in its bid to provide atomic power for civil and commercial missions to deep space. The company established a public-private partnership with the Department of Energy to repurpose nuclear waste into electricity for spacecraft. DOE recently transferred strontium-90 to a commercial nuclear facility, where Zeno Power will recycle the material for its systems, which convert the heat from the decay of unstable radioactive isotopes into electricity.

Zeno Power Systems announced Jan. 26 it is working with the U.S. Department of Energy to recycle decades-old radioactive material to produce radioisotope power sources. Under the agreement with DOE, Zeno will have access to a large supply of strontium-90, a radioisotope created as a byproduct in nuclear fission reactors. The