A three-year study to evaluate if launching big solar farms into space may successfully supply the world's energy needs is about to get approval from the European Space Agency (ESA).
ESA would use a space-based solar power plant in a geostationary orbit, Interesting Engineering said. It would be in constant orbit around the Earth, receiving daily solar radiation.
Thus, if all goes according to plan, the technology may one day gather enormous energy from space, sufficient to power millions of homes.
Space-Based Solar Power involves harvesting sunlight from Earth orbit then beaming it down to the surface where it is needed.
ESA's Space-based Solar Power Energy May "Solve Many Problems"
The Solaris project by the ESA is one of many comparable ones being carried out worldwide. Others include the Space Solar Power Project by Caltech and ongoing research by China's Xidian University, which has constructed a 75-meter-tall (246-foot-tall) steel tower to test the technology for a ground receiving station.
Today, Tuesday, November 22, the ESA's triennial council is slated to meet with the research ministers to examine the ESA'S concept. Before deciding on the funding for the following stage of the space agency's objectives for space technology development, they will also consider several additional recommendations.
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Josef Aschbacher, the director general of ESA, stated in a BBC News report: "We do need to transition to carbon-neutral economies, which will require that we modify the way we produce energy and, in particular, cut back on the use of fossil fuels."
He added that this project would solve "many problems" if energy were converted from space and sent to Earth.
The ESA's Solaris plan comes as the globe is turning more and more to cutting-edge renewable energy technology as the energy situation in many regions of the world is made worse by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
How and When Space-based Solar Power Would Work
According to Hull Live, ESA is asking its member countries to contribute money to the Solaris research program. It would examine whether technological advancements may make space-based solar power dependable or economically feasible.
One area of research is whether it is feasible to transport solar energy gathered in space to power systems on Earth. It would need wireless transmission utilizing microwave beams.
Under the ESA plan, a UK government evaluation found that it could be feasible to have a satellite capable of producing the equivalent amount of electricity as a power plant, or around 2 GW, by 2040.
Its primary quality is its capacity to supply baseload clean energy day and night, throughout the year, and in any weather, they added.
The next stage is to discover whether it can do this across a distance greater than the standard geostationary satellite orbital altitude of 22,000 miles (35,400 km).
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