US Air Force Plans to Harvest Solar Energy in Space, Send It to Earth

The US Air Force's SSPIDR project aims to find technology that will allow it to beam solar energy directly to its remote military bases.

By Edited by Gadgets 360 Newsdesk | Updated: 21 May 2021 11:04 IST

US Air Force Plans to Harvest Solar Energy in Space, Send It to Earth

Photo Credit: YouTube/ AFResearchLab

SSPIDR project can beam back harvested solar energy straight down to an outpost

Highlights

The project is dubbed SSPIDR
SSIPDR can beam back solar energy directly down to any location
US Air Force Research Laboratory has shared a video on how SSPIDR works

US Air Force (USAF) is trying to make space-based solar power a reality. The USAF aims to achieve something that it believes will go a long way in addressing the energy demand of its military personnel deployed at remote bases in the short term. However, it would ultimately be made available for civilian use. It wants to harvest the Sun's energy in space using solar panels and then beam it down for use on Earth. Successfully developing such a capability would be a big advantage for the USAF on the battlefield, officials say.

At present, the US military uses convoys of trucks and their escorts to transport fuels and other supplies to provide electricity to forward military bases. These convoys are vulnerable to enemy attacks from air and ground. The new project, named Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project (SSPIDR), would allow solar energy to be beamed straight down to an outpost, irrespective of the day and time and latitude and climate of the area.

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has shared a video on YouTube describing the initial idea and potential use of such a capability. The AFRL is dedicated to discovering, developing, and integrating affordable warfighting technologies for air and space forces.

"Ensuring that a forward operating base maintains reliable power is one of the most dangerous parts of military ground operations,” says the narrator of the video, adding, “Convoys and supply lines are a major target for adversaries”.

The ground-based solar energy is limited by area, the size of collectors required, and climate. But if the solar panels were deployed in orbit, they could have unfettered access to the Sun's rays, providing an uninterrupted supply of energy.

However, the problem is getting the energy down to the ground. Running cables from space to the ground isn't practical. So, the AFRL says it wants to deploy sunlight-harvesting satellites in space to convert solar energy into radio frequency (RF) power and beam it to Earth, where receiving antennas will transform the RF energy into usable power.

The AFRL describes the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project (SSPIDR) as a series of integrated demonstrations and technology maturation efforts.

What is the best phone under Rs. 30,000 in India right now? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.