Space is one of the most demanding environments that humans have explored. Its extreme temperatures and high levels of electromagnetic and particle radiation make it a fundamental challenge for any spacecraft. This challenge is compounded for photovoltaic cells, which have to generate power for the entirety of the mission. These cells need strong cover glass to protect them and their components, as well as to increase efficiency by providing high light transmission.
On October 4, , a great chapter in the age of space travel began with the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. However, the first artificial Earth satellite's mission was a short one. At that time, batteries were used to power the satellite. These lasted for only 21 days, and after 92 days in orbit, Sputnik 1 burned up in the atmosphere.
At that point, the race for technical superiority in space began. Shortly thereafter, satellites were equipped with solar cells in addition to batteries. The goal of the built-in solar cell was to supply satellites with electricity for the duration of their missions with power obtained from solar radiation in orbit. This addition significantly reduced battery mass and substantially extended mission duration. Of the approximately 4,900 active satellites orbiting the Earth by the end of , nearly every satellite relies on solar cells to provide a reliable power supply.
Another challenge for satellites in space is wear and tear. Space is a hostile environment, with extreme low and high temperatures and enormous temperature changes. Additionally, missions face pressures from the vacuum atmosphere, and high doses of electromagnetic and charged particle radiation from the Sun and other stars outside our solar system. These are extremely stressful for materials.
In order to withstand the challenging environmental conditions of space, materials require suitable protection. In order to function, the solar cells that equip satellites rely on the long-term protection provided by covering solar cells with glass.
Solar energy generation has grown far cheaper and more efficient in recent years, but no matter how much technology advances, fundamental limitations will always remain: solar panels can only generate power during the daytime, clouds often get in the way and much of the sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere during its journey to the ground. What if instead we could collect solar power up in space and beam it down to the surface?
Sunlight is on average more than ten times as intense at the top of the atmosphere as it is down at the surface of the Earth. And up at a sufficiently high orbit sunlight would be available on a continuous basis, to capture all the sunlight available, able to be beamed to receiving stations across the planet, wherever it is needed.
The basic concept has been around for a long time, but has been given fresh urgency by the need for new sources of clean and secure energy to aid Europe’s transition to a Net Zero carbon world by .
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Decades of research has led to a diversity of concepts using different forms of power generation, conversion and transmission principles. The so-called reference design transforms solar power into electricity via photovoltaic cells in geostationary orbit around Earth. The power is then transmitted wirelessly in the form of microwaves at 2.45 GHz to dedicated receiver stations on Earth, called ‘rectennas’, which convert the energy back into electricity and feed it into the local grid.
Space-Based Solar Power, SBSP, is based on existing technological principles and known physics, with no new breakthroughs required. Today’s telecom satellites transmitting TV signals and communication links from orbit are basically power-beaming satellites – except at a far smaller scale of size and power.
The biggest challenge is that – in order to generate optimal, economically-viable levels of solar power – the required structures need to be very large, both on Earth and in space. A single solar power satellite at geostationary orbit might extend more than a kilometre across, with the receiver station on the ground needing a footprint more than ten times larger.
It took dozens of launches to construct the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit, and would likely require an order of magnitude more launches to assemble a solar power satellite that weighs in at many thousands of tonnes. In the past, due to the high costs of launch, solar power satellites were not deemed to be economically competitive with terrestrial solutions.
But worldwide launch costs continue to trend downwards, making such construction economically feasible, and the end-result would be a continuously available source of clean energy. A single solar power satellite of the planned scale would generate around 2 gigawatts of power, equivalent to a conventional nuclear power station, able to power more than one million homes. It would take more than six million solar panels on Earth’s surface to generate the same amount.
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