1/14/2025 2:47:37 PM | less than a minute read

China’s Potential Space Solar Breakthrough

Baker Botts

The future’s coming faster than we thought—let’s embrace it.

China is pioneering a space-based solar power project, hailed as the “Manhattan Project” of clean energy. Imagine a 1km-wide solar array orbiting 36,000 km above Earth, collecting sunlight 24/7—unaffected by weather or night cycles—and transmitting it wirelessly to Earth. Reports suggest that once fully operational by 2050, the space-based solar array will send a similar amount of electricity into the grid as a nuclear power station.

Expected to collect energy at a constant rate more than 10-times more efficient than photovoltaic panels on Earth, China is planning to build a solar array 1km-wide. The energy collected by the outer space solar, situated along the 36,000km geostationary orbit, is expected to be converted to microwaves before being beamed to a collector station for transmission back to Earth. The project has been coined the Manhattan Project of the energy sector — the original Manhattan Project being the top-secret World War II programme that developed the first atomic bombs.

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