Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: Caltech

Caltech has announced that Donald Bren, chairman of Irvine Company and a lifetime member of the Caltech Board of Trustees, donated over $100 million to form the Space-based Solar Power Project (SSPP), which is developing technology capable of generating solar power in space and beaming it back to Earth.

Credit: Caltech

The donation was made anonymously in 2013, but the gift is now being disclosed as SSPP nears a significant milestone: a test launch of multifunctional technology-demonstrator prototypes that collect sunlight and convert it to electrical energy, transfer energy wirelessly in free-space using radio frequency (RF) electrical power, and deploy ultra-light structures that will be used to integrate them.

First test

The project’s first test, which will occur in early 2023, will launch technology prototypes for the solar power generators and RF wireless power transfer, and includes a deployable structure measuring roughly 6 feet by 6 feet.

From left, Sergio Pellegrino, the Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Civil Engineering, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist and co-director of the Space-Based Solar Power Project; Brigitte Bren; Donald Bren; Ali Hajimiri, the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and co-director of the Space-Based Solar Power Project; and Richard Madonna, project manager of the Space-Based Solar Power Project.

SSPP aims to ultimately produce a global supply of affordable, renewable, clean energy. A key benefit of harnessing solar power from space is that it provides access to the sun to create power all day, every day, free from weather constraints or darkness of night.

Go to this Caltech video Space Solar Power: A New Beginning – Sergio Pellegrino (dated 10/31/2018) at:

https://youtu.be/em8T1nOL0tM

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