☀️🛰️ Space-based solar power isn't just a sci-fi dream anymore. With falling launch costs and recent breakthroughs, including a successful energy transmission by a Caltech team, harnessing the sun from space is closer to reality. 🚀💡 FutureTech
The April 1941 issue ofincluded "Reason," a story by Isaac Asimov later published in the collectionseries was set on a space station that beams power in the form of microwaves directly to planets.a NASA engineer who worked on, among other projects, the Apollo moon missions, took a big step in turning Asimov's plot device into reality.
In June 2023, they transmitted energy from a satellite in space to a receiver on the roof of their Caltech lab. It wasn't a lot of energy — enough to light up two LEDs — but it was a major step. Paul Jaffe, an electrical engineer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, works on similar technology at NRL and has been involved in many of the technological breakthroughs that have made this possible.
The technology could also be helpful in providing energy to disaster areas, places with no existing energy infrastructure, and for military applications, Jaffe adds. Jaffe says is a very exciting step but warns that it is still the early days of this technology. "There's a lot of uncertainty with this," he says. And it's not just the technological challenges but regulatory and economic issues as well. "I think it's a critical area for us to be investigating, but there's certainly no guarantee that this would ever get to the level needed to supply the grid," he says.
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