AFRL Demos Space-Based Solar Power System.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

* The military may be one step closer to powering its bases with solar energy from space.

Researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project, or SSPIDR, successfully converted solar energy to radio frequency and simulated beaming it down to Earth at Northrop Grumman facilities in Linthicum, Maryland, according to a news release.

The experiment, conducted in December, was the first end-to-end demonstration of technology that the company and AFRL believe will inform the future of space-based large-scale solar power collection.

AFRL awarded Northrop Grumman a $100 million contract in 2018 to develop a satellite payload that would demonstrate the key elements of the research lab's Arachne flight experiment, which aims to test technologies for a prototype solar power transmission system capable of powering a forward operating base from space.

Researchers were able to simulate beaming the converted energy to a receiving station on the ground, said Melody Martinez, SSPIDR's deputy project manager. That energy would then be collected by an antenna and transformed into usable power for warfighters, according to an AFRL fact sheet.

"It's been a very interesting topic in science fiction and as a future capability, but nothing's actually happened with it before," Martinez said.

This was the first time such a capability had been demonstrated, she noted.

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