Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project: Wireless Energy Transfer in Space

Everything worked on the Earth’s surface, and the team was brave enough not to protect the experiment’s components in any special way from space influences. They therefore also test its resistance to adverse conditions. The energy transfer itself uses several individual transmitters that can create a directed beam by adding and interfering with the waves, while nothing important is transmitted in its surroundings due to the interference of the waves. In addition, the routing does not take place mechanically, but only by the phase shift of the individual waves, when their delay only changes the place where addition occurs and where the waves interfere. The receiver was on the ground at the Caltech campus in Pasadena. The signal appeared exactly at the expected moment at the given location with the expected frequency and frequency offset. Unfortunately, we do not know how much energy was sent here and with what power.

The advantage of this solution is that it does not require any ready infrastructure at the receiver location. It can thus be used, for example, in the event of disasters, when only the receiver is transported to the destination and it can already provide electricity. The question here is whether it wouldn’t be easier and cheaper to send some big charged flashlight (or a good old generator) over there. Two other experiments were part of the SSPD-1 mission. DOLCE (Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment) has dimensions of approx. 1.8×1.8 meters and tests the mechanism of packing and unpacking modular spaceships. The ALBA experiment then includes 32 different types of small solar panels, testing which types will be most suitable for space deployment.