The California Institute of Technology has big news for space-based power. Researchers at the university have reportedly beamed solar power from space to Earth without a single wire—and they say it’s a first. The experiment is a part of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, and the institute announced a successful transmission via press release yesterday. The researchers conducted the power transfer experiment using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment, or MAPLE, which is a small prototype aboard the in-orbit Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1) that launched this past January. The researchers say that, in a first, MAPLE’s array of transmitters successfully beamed solar power collected in space using microwaves to a receiver on the rooftop of Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory of Engineering on Caltech’s campus in Pasadena. The SSPD-1, attached to a Vigoride spacetug from Momentus Space, consists of two panels used to collect solar power. An array of transmitters within MAPLE sends that energy across a given distance using constructive and destructive interference.
Full story : Scientists Successfully Transmit Space-Based Solar Power to Earth for the First Time.
