Cocktail hour for ET? Nasa design to harvest energy from the sun

• Solar energy harvester will beam energy to Earth in form of microwaves

• Huge solar panel would float in space

• Made of thousands of curved mirrors

• Solaren Corp

NASA’s announcement comes after regulators in California approved a contract with US firm Solaren Corp to supply space based solar power to a company in the US state as early as 2016.

SPS-ALPHA, or Solar Power Satellite

John Mankins, who runs California based firm Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, said the

SPS-ALPHA, or Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, could become a reality one day.

PV to Microwave

The inside of the SPS-ALPHA would also be lined with photovaltic panels which convert the sun’s energy into microwaves.

source: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech