• Engineers need to be able to wirelessly transmit gigawatts of electricity from space securely and dependably for space-based solar power to function.
• The possibility of beaming electricity wirelessly into millions of houses from space is something that space leaders will look into.
• The suggestion will be discussed by the ESA governing council on Tuesday at its Paris headquarters.

This week, the European Orbit Agency is expected to approve a three-year study to determine if building massive solar farms in space would be feasible and cost-effective.

The ultimate goal is to place enormous satellites in orbit, each of which is capable of producing the same amount of electricity as a power plant.

The suggestion will be discussed by the ESA governing council on Tuesday at its Paris headquarters.

The so-called Solaris programme would be the first to provide the foundation for a workable strategy to construct a space-based renewable energy generation system, even though other organisations and other space agencies have looked into the notion.

The programme is one of several ideas that research ministers are debating at the ESA Council meeting in Paris, which will determine the funding for the organization’s future goals for communications, environmental monitoring, and space exploration.

ESA’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, told BBC News that he thought solar energy from orbit may provide “enormous” assistance in addressing upcoming energy shortages.

“We do need to transition to carbon-neutral economies, he continued, so we must alter the way we create energy and, in particular, cut back on the use of fossil fuels.”

“It would be amazing because it would address a lot of problems if you could do it from space, and I’m saying if we could because we aren’t there yet”.

Because there is no nighttime or cloud cover in space, the Sun’s energy may be captured far more effectively. The concept has been around for more than 50 years, but up until maybe now, it has been too expensive and impossible to put into practise.

The dramatic decrease in launch costs brought about by reusable rockets and other technologies created by the private sector has changed the game. However, improvements in robotic construction in space and the creation of technology to wirelessly beam electricity from space to Earth have also been made.

To discover if these advancements mean that it is now possible to generate space-based solar power consistently and inexpensively enough to make it economically viable, the ESA is asking its member countries for funding for a research programme it calls Solaris.

According to Dr. Sanjay Vijendran of the ESA, who is the scientist in charge of the Solaris effort, “the concept of space-based solar power is no longer science fiction,”

“The potential is there, but before we can decide to move forward with trying to create something in space, we need to thoroughly grasp the technological approach.”

The Solaris program’s main goal is to determine whether it is feasible to transport solar energy captured in orbit to Earth’s electrical grids. Of course, using a really long cable would be impractical, thus the information must be transmitted wirelessly via microwave rays.

The Solaris team has demonstrated that it is theoretically possible to transmit electricity wirelessly in a secure and effective manner.

At a demonstration at the aerospace company Airbus in Munich in September, engineers wirelessly transmitted 2 KW of solar cell output to collectors more than 30 metres distant. Sending gigawatts of power over thousands of kilometres will be a significant advancement, but according to Jean Dominique Coste, senior manager for Airbus’ blue sky business, it might be accomplished in a series of modest stages.

There are no technical barriers that prevent us from having space-based solar power, according to our team of scientists, he stated.

The company that created the wireless beaming system, Emrod, whose principal scientist is Dr. Ray Simpkin, declared that the technology was secure.

Nothing will burn, he assured reporters.

Even at the peak intensity in the centre of the beam, the power is dispersed over a sufficiently wide region to pose little threat to either people or animals.

In the battle to build space-based solar power, the US, China, and Japan are also well ahead and are soon expected to reveal their own proposals. Separate from the ESA concept, a business called Space Solar has been established in the UK. In six years, it hopes to test beaming power from space, and in nine years, it hopes to do so commercially.

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