California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has received $100 million in funding for their Space-based Solar Power Project (SSPP), which is developing technology capable of generating solar power in space and beaming it back to Earth.
Caltech describes the project as “collecting solar power in space and transmitting the energy wirelessly to Earth through microwaves enables terrestrial power availability unaffected by weather or time of day. Solar power could be continuously available anywhere on Earth.”
The Space-based Solar Power Project has been underway since at least 2013 when the first donation arrived from Donald and Brigitte Bren. The gift is now being disclosed as SSPP nears a significant milestone: a test launch of multifunctional technology-demonstrator prototypes that collect sunlight and convert it to electrical energy, transfer energy wirelessly in free-space using radio frequency (RF) electrical power, and deploy ultralight structures that will be used to integrate them.
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