Solar power from satellites poised to become reality within a year

In a nutshell: The European Space Agency spent years studying space-based star powerfulness arsenic a imaginable solution for gathering one-third of nan country's power needs. Sunlight, connected average, is much than 10 times arsenic aggravated astatine nan apical of nan ambiance arsenic it is astatine nan Earth's surface. Their study indicated that implementing this solution would require infrastructure costing hundreds of billions of dollars, chiefly successful nan shape of geostationary satellites positioned 36,000 km supra nan Earth.

The daunting method and financial hurdles person led galore to disregard nan conception arsenic a super-cool sci-fi dream that could ne'er really activity successful nan existent world. However, 1 entrepreneur believes he has cracked nan codification to make space-based star powerfulness affordable and applicable successful nan adjacent future.

His sanction is Baiju Bhatt, nan co-founder of nan Robinhood trading app. After stepping backmost from his CEO domiciled location successful 2020, Bhatt launched a caller startup called Aetherflux, which intends to beam star powerfulness down from abstraction wrong astir a year.

Bhatt's attack sidesteps nan highly costly steps of building a monolithic constellation of satellites. Instead, Aetherflux is starting mini pinch conscionable a azygous outer positioned astir 500 km up successful low-earth orbit.

"If we succeed, we unlock a renewable power root for humanity that tin beryllium delivered virtually anywhere," Bhatt wrote successful a LinkedIn station launching his caller venture.

The scheme is to motorboat a "kilowatt-class" solar-powered spacecraft successful nan adjacent 12 to 15 months that tin transmit infrared laser beams carrying star power down to a 10-meter crushed receiver. While it won't supply overmuch powerfulness astatine first, nan cardinal goals are to beryllium that nan strategy useful safely and efficiently.

If nan objection is successful, Aetherflux plans to travel up pinch progressively larger constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites that tin collectively supply continuous, cleanable powerfulness connected a much meaningful scale. Initially, this renewable power watercourse could proviso distant areas without reliable grids, specified arsenic disaster zones, mining operations, and subject bases.

However, nan existent semipermanent imaginable lies successful utilizing space-based star powerfulness arsenic a baseload powerfulness root to supplement renewable sources for illustration upwind and terrestrial star farms.

Of course, galore technological and financial hurdles remain. Aetherflux has self-funded nan institution successful nan "ten-millionish range" truthful far, but overmuch larger investments will beryllium needed to standard up. There are besides biology concerns astir nan imaginable impacts of high-powered laser beams perpetually passing done Earth's atmosphere, arsenic good arsenic nan anticipation of exacerbating nan light pollution problem troubling astronomers astir nan world.

Hopefully, nan benefits of this caller cleanable power will outweigh immoderate imaginable drawbacks.

It's worthy mentioning that Aetherflux isn't unsocial successful nan thought of beaming star power (or sunlight) to nan Earth's aboveground via satellites. Another startup, Reflect Orbital, has precocious projected a much nonstop approach: bouncing sunlight onto star farms utilizing a constellation of mini mirrored satellites.