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NEWS 2009.09.10 Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced: What: The project demonstrated wireless power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space. It will be featured in an hour-long special that evening on Discovery Channel as part of DISCOVERY PROJECT EARTH, an eight-part series on the most ambitious geo-engineering ideas to tackle global climate change and the need for new and sustainable energy sources. Space-based solar power, in which large satellites would collect plentiful solar energy in orbit and beam it safely down to Earth, could one day reduce our carbon emissions to virtually zero. It is the only energy technology that is clean, renewable, constant and capable of providing power to virtually any location on Earth. Mankins will describe the demonstration project and show a realistic plan forward to develop this promising technology. During the week of May 5-9, 2008, a key step on the path to Space-Based Solar Power was achieved: a "first-of-a-kind" long-range demonstration of solar-powered wireless power transmission using a solid-state phased array transmitter located on the U.S. island of Maui (on Haleakala) and receivers located on the island of Hawai'i (Mauna Loa) and airborne. The demonstration, achieved by Managed Energy Technologies LLC of the U.S. and sponsored by Discovery Communications, Inc., involved the transmission of RF energy over a distance of up to 148 kilometers (about 90 miles): almost 100-times further than a major 1970s power transmission performed by NASA in the Mojave Desert in California. The 2008 project (which lasted only 5 months and cost less than $1M) proved that real progress toward Space Solar Power can be made quickly, affordably and internationally, including key participants from the U.S. and Japan. A number of key technologies were integrated and tested together for the first time in this project, including solar power modules, solid-state FET amplifiers, and a novel "retrodirective" phase control system. In addition, the project developed the first ever "field-deployable" system-developing new information regarding the prospective economics of space solar power / wireless power transmission systems. The project was sponsored by Discovery Communications as part of its Project Earth series, and produced by Impossible Pictures Ltd. of the U.K. The television program resulting from the project will first air on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. on 12 September 2008 at 10:00 pm, as part of the Project Earth series. "This milestone demonstrates that Space-Based Solar Power deserves further study as one important answer to America's future energy needs," said Mark Hopkins, Senior Vice President of the National Space Society. "This kind of demonstration is critical to the incremental development of breakthrough technologies." The project's leader was former NASA executive and physicist John C. Mankins (Chief Operating Officer of Managed Energy Technologies LLC, and President of the Space Power Association). Key participants included Professor Nobuyuki Kaya of Kobe University in Japan and Frank Little of Texas A&M University in the U.S. (both world leaders in WPT technology), and Dr. Neville I. Marzwell of the California Institute of Technology. Students at the two universities were largely responsible for fabrication of the hardware for this first-of-a-kind experiment. When: Where: Who: Hosted by: Links: - National Space Society (NSS) Press Annoucement Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced (09 September 2008) - Discovery Channel We could have a source of never-ending power and, at the same time, reduce our carbon emissions to virtually zero. This is the astonishing vision of former NASA physicist John Mankins. He has a plan to send thousands of satellites into space, which will gather energy from the sun and then beam the solar energy down to Earth as microwave energy. The microwave energy will be collected by antennas on the ground. These then convert the energy to electricity. Can Mankins make it all work? Program Highlights from Disocvery Project Earth
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