Space-based solar power
Space-based solar power means collecting sunlight in orbit, where it never gets cloudy, and beaming the energy down to Earth.
In 1968, engineer Peter Glaser proposed in the journal Science to park vast solar arrays in high orbit and send their power down as microwaves. Up there, energy is available without day and night, seasons or cloud cover. For half a century the idea stayed on paper, too heavy and too expensive to launch. Then in 2023, a Caltech prototype transmitted power wirelessly in orbit and sent a detectable beam to a rooftop in Pasadena.
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