Out of this world: solar farm in space to power the Earth

Euronews. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction - but Europe might one day be powered by giant solar panels orbiting space.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled a plan to harvest the sun’s energy in space and beam it down to Earth.

The technology is still in the preliminary testing phase - but the end goal is the construction of a 2km long solar space farm, generating as much energy as a nuclear power plant.

The farm would orbit 36,000 km above the Earth. Robots will provide continuous maintenance in space.

The "cableless" energy transmission works like a wifi or 4G antenna (!). Challenge is to avoid the wave to spread and have it very concentrated (like a laser). And convert it back to energy.

Cheaper than oil, gas or nuclear, scientist hope it to become reality within 20 years.

Click below for a video (in French with English subtitles).

And recall here the July post about the Chinese experiment also to beam solar power from space to Earth, already showing promising results.