This preprint presents the Centennial Autonomous Mission Architecture (CAMA), a conceptual framework for long-duration non-radioactive autonomous power systems designed for extraterrestrial, oceanic, polar, and remote terrestrial environments. The architecture integrates passive energy harvesting, helium-based thermodynamic power conversion, thermoelectric recovery, heterogeneous multi-tier energy storage, and a hierarchical fail-safe control framework emphasizing hardware-primary autonomy. The proposed system combines BaTiO₃-based piezoelectric and pyroelectric harvesting layers, redundant helium containment structures, thermally stable reserve battery architectures, analog safety systems, and AI-assisted optimization layers designed to operate as non-critical enhancements rather than primary control dependencies. The work focuses on survivability-centered engineering principles including graceful degradation, subsystem redundancy, and autonomous emergency operation under partial system failure. Potential applications include lunar infrastructure, deep-sea monitoring platforms, planetary probes, Arctic autonomous stations, and unattended scientific installations requiring long-duration operation without radioactive isotopes or continuous solar dependence. This work is presented as a conceptual systems-engineering and architectural study intended to support future quantitative modeling, subsystem validation, and long-term reliability analysis.
Francis Procaccia (Sun,) studied this question.