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Space Solar Power Project Ends First In-Space Mission with Successes and Lessons
A 10-month mission demonstrated three elements of the plan to beam solar power from space to Earth.
"The space test has demonstrated the robustness of the basic concept, which has allowed us to achieve a successful deployment in spite of two anomalies," says Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering and co-director of SSPP. Some of the solar cells were custom-fabricated using facilities in the SSPP labs and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) at Caltech, which gave the team a reliable and fast way to get small cutting-edge devices quickly ready for flight. SSPP began after philanthropist Donald Bren, chairman of Irvine Company and a life member of the Caltech community, first learned about the potential for space-based solar energy manufacturing as a young man in an article in Popular Science magazine.
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