New breakthroughs in space power generation, scientists transmit solar energy wirelessly back to the ground for the first time

CTOnews.com, June 3, California Institute of Technology has made a great breakthrough in the field of space power generation, successfully transmitting solar energy from space to the ground without a wired connection, achieving a major breakthrough from 0 to 1.

The California Institute of Technology's space solar energy program announced the breakthrough in a press release issued yesterday. The team successfully carried out the microwave array power transfer low orbit experiment (MAPLE) project, which realized the wireless transfer of solar energy through the on-orbit space solar demonstrator (SSPD-1) launched in January this year.

For the first time, MAPLE's transmitter array successfully uses microwaves to transmit solar energy collected from space to receivers on the rooftops of the California Institute of Technology's Pasadena campus's Gordon and Betty Moore Engineering Laboratories, researchers say.

Ali Hajimiri, co-director of the Space Solar Program (Space Solar Power Project), gave a speech as follows: "our existing experiments show that MAPLE can successfully transfer solar energy from space to the ground. We can also program arrays to adjust the direction of solar energy transmission."