Adelaide-based nuclear engineering and technology developer entX has been awarded its second major grant in 2025 to help fund a collaborative project for its innovative Radioisotope Heating Unit (RHU).

The latest grant comes from Round 2 of the South Australian Government’s Space Collaboration and Innovation Fund (SASIC), which has awarded entX more than $200,000 to help fast-track the development of this technology by supporting a collaborative project with Japanese partner ispace.

ispace collaboration

ispace, a global lunar exploration company, is known for its innovative approach to lunar transportation and resource utilization. However, its upcoming missions underscore a key technology gap: surviving the extreme cold of the lunar night. entX’s RHU may provide a solution to this challenge, providing lander and payload designers with a reliable way to extend asset lifetimes from a single lunar day to several months.

entX and ispace signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in January to explore the integration of entX’s RHU with ispace’s lunar landers and rovers. The joint study will evaluate technical feasibility, focusing on thermal requirements, packaging, and system compatibility to enable extended mission durations, including survival through the lunar night.

The partnership between entX and ispace may unlock opportunities for the technology to be used by ispace payload customers on future lunar missions. In parallel, entX is also engaging with US launch providers and regulatory bodies to gain flight heritage for its RHU in the US.

This grant will underpin and fund the entX–ispace collaboration, support the validation of entX’s RHU for the lunar market, enhance ispace’s capability to support long-duration missions, and position both companies to attract new payload customers, contributing to the growth of the space industries in Australia and Japan.

The entX RHU

NASA’s recent Civil Space Capability Shortfall survey identified survival of the extreme cold of the lunar night as the highest-priority shortfall that could impede future space and lunar exploration.

Working with the Australian Space Agency (ASA), the iLAuNCH Trailblazer program and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), entX has developed a commercially viable RHU to fill this need.

The entX RHU substitutes the tightly controlled Plutonium used in historical RHUs, which has been restricted to US and other government space missions, with safer alternatives that carry a lower regulatory burden. This enables the commercial space sector to utilise entX technology to heat critical electronics within spacecraft for lunar night survival, allowing systems to operate well beyond a single lunar night.

entX Managing Director Bryn Jones said: “With the huge ramp up in lunar exploration, the timing of this grant is perfect as demand for this type of solution has never been higher.

This support from the South Australian government will enable us to work closely with ispace to investigate the feasibility of integrating our RHU into future lunar missions.”.

For more information, contact Dr Scott Edwards, General Manager Space and Defence scott@entx.com.au