Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash
It happened just as it was designed to, thanks to an entrepreneur and a lot of scientists at CalTech. The January 16 issue of AGREEN1 covered the grand idea of harvesting solar energy from space and wirelessly beaming that power source to Earth. CalTech announced that on March 3, a wireless power transfer occurred. Entrepreneur turned philanthropist Donald Bren provided the goals and funds to make this happen.
MAPLE (Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment) has successfully transmitted power to receivers in space, and team leader, Ali Hajimiri and his crew at CalTech are elated. He said; “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”
If all goes according to the scientists’ plans, the problem of supplying unlimited, clean energy to every part of the globe will be solved. It’s a race for time as our mother Earth continues to heat up and trigger major environmental catastrophes for all life on Earth.
