Japan plans orbiting solar energy stations

Energy will be “beamed down” to terrestrial stations.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA, Japan’s space agency, plans to use orbiting power stations to capture solar energy and send it down to Earth. The plan is another long-term solution to Japan’s energy woes following the shutdown of its nuclear reactors after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in March 2011. JAXA intends to orbit a Space Solar Power System (SSPS) by 2030.

This array of extremely light mirrors will be parked in geostationary orbit to collect solar energy and transmit this energy to a terrestrial power plant via microwave or laser beams. “We have not yet decided whether to use microwaves or laser beams with SSPS, or whether we will somehow combine them.

We are currently conducting ground-based experiments to find the most efficient way to transmit energy,” said Yasuyuki , who is leading the research and planning for SSPS. “Regardless of which transmission technology we use, when we collect sunlight from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, we can get a continuous supply of it, with almost no influence from the weather, the seasons, or time of day, allowing very efficient collection of solar energy.