For decades, energy in space has been a problem almost invisible to the public, but fundamental to any mission. Each satellite, space station or orbital vehicle depends on its own solar panels and batteriesas if each device had to permanently carry its own small power plant on its back. That limits its size, its autonomy and, above all, what it can do. Now, an American company called Star Catcher wants to change that logic with an idea that seems straight out of science fiction: create the world’s first space power grid.
The company has just raised $65 million to develop a system capable of transmitting energy between satellites using infrared lasers. The idea, in essence, is simple: A satellite collects solar energy and sends it wirelessly to another vehicle in orbit that needs it. Like a kind of orbital “electric wifi”.
The closest comparison would be to imagine a drone that never needs to land to recharge because it continuously receives power from another platform. Only here we are talking about satellites moving at more than 28,000 kilometers per hour around the Earth. The company claims that its system will be able to transmit hundreds of watts of power initially, with the goal of reaching several kilowatts in the future. It may sound little compared to a terrestrial power plant, but in space those figures change completely in scale.
The International Space Station, for example, It generates between 75 and 90 kilowatts using huge solar panels that occupy an area similar to a football field. A conventional communications satellite usually operates with between 1 and 20 kilowatts. And many small satellites or cubesats operate on just tens of watts: less than a household light bulb.
That means that transmitting even a few hundred watts wirelessly in orbit could temporarily double the power capacity of numerous satellites small without the need to add larger panels or additional batteries.
The key to the project is the infrared lasers. Instead of sending electricity through cables, which is impossible between objects separated by hundreds of kilometers in a vacuum, the system converts the energy into a beam of light. concentrated that travels to another satellite equipped with special photovoltaic cells capable of converting that light into electricity.
The physics behind the process is not new. In fact, wireless power transmission has been studied for decades. Nikola Tesla was already fantasizing about something similar at the end of the 19th century. But Doing so on Earth presents enormous energy losses due to atmosphere, clouds or interference. In the vacuum of space, however, the environment is much more favorable.
And that’s where the idea starts to get really interesting. Because the goal of Star Catcher is not simply to power isolated satellites. Your vision is create a shared orbital energy infrastructure. A kind of space electrical network where different vehicles can temporarily “connect” to receive energy when they need it. That could change a lot of things.
Currently, a huge part of the weight of satellites corresponds to energy systems: solar panels, batteries, deployment mechanisms and thermal protection. If some of that energy could be received externally, satellites could be smaller, lighter and much cheaper to launch.
In addition, it would allow systems to be kept operational that would normally be unusable when entering the Earth’s shadow or when their batteries ran out. Even could power future private space stations, lunar bases or deep exploration vehicles.
The idea fits especially well with the new commercial space race. In the last decade alone, the number of active satellites in orbit has multiplied several times, driven by companies such as SpaceX, Amazon or OneWeb. In fact, In all of space history, until 2013, about 7,000 satellites had been launched. Today there are more than 10,000 active simultaneously around the Earth. Earth’s orbit is no longer a space reserved for government agencies and is beginning to look more like an expanding industrial infrastructure. And all industrial infrastructure needs energy.
Of course, enormous technical challenges still remain. Accurately pointing a laser between objects moving at orbital speeds is not trivial. There are also energy losses in each conversion: electricity to light, light to electricity. And any system based on energy beams must resolve issues of security and international regulation.
But even if the initial efficiency is limited, the concept has one enormous advantage: it breaks with the idea that each satellite must be energy self-sufficient. It is, in a way, the same conceptual leap that occurred with the internet. The first computers were independent islands. The revolution did not come when they became more powerful, but when they began to connect with each other. Now space could be approaching a similar change. Not just a satellite network, but an orbital energy network. And that brings new controversies about security, monopoly and cyber attacks to a network on which much of our current way of life depends.