Nuclear energy is set to make crewed space stations on the Moon a reality soon – what sounds like a distant future is currently being researched at FRM II. Aerospace engineer Julius Mercz is developing a reactor concept for the Moon as part of his doctoral thesis, a project that is also funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). We spoke with him about the background of the project.

Lea Westphal of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is the lead author of a new study that provides the most detailed, temperature-dependent picture of ethylene carbonate (EC) to date. EC is a solvent used in the electrolytes of lithium-ion batteries.

In ‘defect engineering’, defects are purposely created in the atomic lattice to change material properties. An interdisciplinary research team led by Dr Yu-Te Chan and Dr Cristina Grosu from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has detected crystal defects at the FRM II’s NEPOMUC positron source that make batteries more efficient.