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“These contracts are for the first European concept studies of Space-Based Solar Power for more than 20 years, so today marks an important step,” notes Sanjay Vijendran, ESA’s lead for SOLARIS. “We are really starting from a blank sheet of paper to get an up-to-date design for what working solar power satellites could look like, sourcing promising ideas from everywhere we can, and leveraging the latest advancements in space and terrestrial technologies”.
The system studies’ blank sheet approach extends to the methodology of beaming down solar power from orbit, Sanjay explains: “The studies will look at as wide a range of options as possible, including investigating all the different ways to move the energy, safely and efficiently, down to Earth: radio frequency transmission, lasers and simply reflecting sunlight down to solar farms on the ground.