On a blustery November day, a Cessna turboprop flew over Pennsylvania at 5,000 meters, in crosswinds of as much as 70 knots—practically as quick because the little airplane was flying. However the bumpy circumstances didn’t thwart its mission: to wirelessly beam energy right down to receivers on the bottom because it flew by.
The take a look at flight marked the primary time energy has been beamed from a shifting plane. It was carried out by the Ashburn, Virginia-based startup Overview Power, which emerged from stealth mode in December by saying the feat.
However the larger goal of the flight was to show the feasibility of a a lot grander ambition: to beam energy from area to Earth. Overview plans to launch satellites into geosynchronous orbit (GEO) to gather unfiltered photo voltaic power the place the solar by no means units after which beam this abundance again to humanity. The photo voltaic power can be transferred as near-infrared waves and acquired by present photo voltaic panels on the bottom.
The far-flung technique, often known as space-based photo voltaic energy, has turn into the topic of each daydreaming and critical analysis over the previous decade. Caltech’s Area Photo voltaic Energy Mission launched a demonstration mission in 2023 that transferred energy in area utilizing microwaves. And terrestrial energy beaming is coming alongside too. The U.S. Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company (DARPA) in July 2025 set a new file for wirelessly transmitting energy: 800 watts over 8.6 kilometers for 30 seconds utilizing a laser beam.
However till November, nobody had actively beamed energy from a shifting platform to a floor receiver.
Overview’s take a look at transferred solely a sprinkling of energy, however it did it with the identical parts and methods that the corporate plans to ship to area. “Not solely is it the primary optical energy beaming from a shifting platform at any substantial vary or energy,” says Overview CEO Marc Berte, “but in addition it’s the primary time anybody’s actually accomplished an influence beaming factor the place it’s the entire purposeful items all working collectively,” he says. “It’s the identical methodology and performance that we’ll take to area and scale up in the long run.”
The method was compelling sufficient that energy beaming professional Paul Jaffe left his job as a program supervisor at DARPA to affix the corporate as head of programs engineering. Previous to DARPA, Jaffe spent three a long time with the U.S. Naval Analysis Laboratory.
“This really sounds prefer it might work,” –Paul Jaffe
It was listening to Berte clarify Overview’s plan at a convention that helped to persuade Jaffe to take an opportunity on the startup. “This really sounds prefer it might work,” Jaffe remembers pondering on the time. “It actually looks like it will get round quite a lot of the showstoppers for lots of the opposite ideas. I bear in mind coming house and telling my spouse that I virtually felt like the issue had been solved. So I believed: Ought to [I] do one thing which is nearly exceptional—to go away in the midst of being a DARPA program supervisor—to attempt to do one thing else?”
For Jaffe, probably the most compelling cause was in Overview’s answer for space-based photo voltaic’s energy density drawback. A beam with low energy density is safer as a result of it’s not blasting an excessive amount of concentrated power onto a single spot on the Earth’s floor, however it’s much less environment friendly for the duty of delivering usable photo voltaic power. The next-density beam does the job higher, however then the researchers should engineer some strategy to keep security.
Startup Overview Power demonstrates how space-based solar energy could possibly be beamed to Earth from satellites Overview Power
Area-Based mostly Photo voltaic Energy Makes Waves
Many researchers have settled on microwaves as their beam of selection for wi-fi energy. However, along with the protection considerations about capturing such intense waves on the Earth, Jaffe says there’s one other drawback: microwaves are a part of what he calls the “beachfront property” of the electromagnetic spectrum—a spread from 2 to twenty gigahertz that’s put aside for a lot of different functions, corresponding to 5G mobile networks.
“The actual fact is,” Jaffe says, “in the event you by some means magically had a totally operational solar energy satellite tv for pc that used microwave energy transmission in orbit right this moment—and a multi-kilometer-scale microwave energy satellite tv for pc receiver on the bottom magically in place right this moment—you would not flip it on as a result of the spectrum is just not allotted to do this sort of transmission.”
As a substitute, Overview plans to make use of less-dense, wide-field infrared waves. Current utility-scale photo voltaic farms would be capable of obtain the beamed power similar to they obtain the solar’s power throughout sunlight hours. So “your receivers are already constructed,” Berte says. The following main step is a prototype demonstrator for low Earth orbit, after which he hopes to have GEO satellites beaming megawatts of energy by 2030 and gigawatts by later that decade.
Loads of doubts in regards to the feasibility of space-based energy abound. It’s an unique know-how with a lot left to show, together with the power to outlive orbital particles and the exorbitant value of launching the ability stations. (Overview’s satellite tv for pc will likely be constructed on earth in a folded configuration and it’ll unfold after it’s delivered to orbit, in accordance with the corporate).
“Getting down the price per unit mass for launch is a giant deal,” Jaffe says. “Then, it simply turns into a query of accelerating the precise energy. Lots of the applied sciences we’re engaged on at Overview are squarely targeted on that.”
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