2023-08-06 10:00:00
Space agencies want to place in orbit immense “farms” of regarding two square kilometers intended to capture the rays of the Sun and transform them into microwaves.
This article is from the magazine Les Indispensables de Sciences et Avenir n°214 dated July/September 2023.
Capturing the Sun’s energy continuously, day and night, whatever the weather and without covering our floors with solar panels… This is the gigantic challenge taken up by space agencies – in the United States, Europe or China . It is a question of placing in orbit, at more than 30,000 kilometers from the Earth, immense “farms” of regarding two square kilometers intended to capture the rays of the Sun and transform them into microwaves. These would then be transmitted to terrestrial relay antennas capable of converting them into electricity and supplying the network.
“Our fears are more economic than technical“
“We have never deployed in orbit such robotic means to build and maintain a structure of this size. But our fears are more economic than technical“, explains Leopold Summerer, director of the Advanced Concepts department at the European Space Agency (ESA), which is piloting the Solaris space farm project and to which Brussels has just granted an envelope of 17 billion euros intended to finance… a feasibility study.
Electricity at a cost similar to that of nuclear power plants
For the project to be viable, the researchers must indeed propose within two years a space technology capable of producing electricity at a cost similar to that of nuclear power plants. Europe will then give or not the green light for the realization of a demonstrator, the industrial deployment being for its part planned for 2040.
Pair of Riva Brinet Tips
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