Building Space Based Solar Panels

Collecting solar energy in space with reflectors or inflatable mirrors onto solar cells or heaters for thermal systems wireless power transmission to earth via microwave or laser receiving power on earth via a rectenna a microwave.

Building space based solar panels. A space based solar power system could provide energy to everyone even in places that don t receive sunlight all year round like northern europe and russia. Technical problems kept cropping up cost estimates remained stratospheric and as. Reflectors or inflatable mirrors spread over a vast swath of space directing solar radiation onto solar panels. Like fusion energy space based solar power seemed doomed to become a technology that was always 30 years away.

Apart from providing around the clock power on demand beamed from space the new solar cells panels and production processes being developed through the program could revolutionize space based. Building solar panels in space might be as easy as clicking print engineers lyndsey mcmillon brown and timothy peshek lead the study on perovskites a material that could generate enough power to sustain lunar habitats. China is planning to build the world s first solar power station in space to provide inexhaustible clean energy according to a story in science and technology daily the official newspaper of. The juno mission launched in 2011 is the first mission to jupiter arrived at jupiter on july 4 2016 to use solar panels instead of the traditional rtgs that are used by previous outer solar system missions making it the furthest spacecraft to use solar panels to date.

Mankins and others estimate the total cost for developing building launching and assembling all the components of a space based solar power plant is on the order of 4 to 5 billion a fraction of. Space based solar power essentially consists of three elements. Research on space based solar power has been ongoing at caltech where professors harry atwater ali hajimiri and sergio pellegrino have received funding from the northrop grumman corporation to. These panels convert solar power into either a microwave or a laser and beam uninterrupted power down to earth.