Japan Plans Giant Space-Based Solar Farm

JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is planning to send a solar power station into space. The target date is set for 2025.

Vice.com describes the endeavor: “Floating 24,000 miles above the Earth’s surface is a mammoth power plant (power satellite may be more accurate) that stretches several miles long, weighs 10,000 metric tons, and is covered with solar panels basking in the sun and storing up its powerful energy.”

The station would be tethered to a base on earth, attached with six-mile long wires. 

Once the station is launched “the station then has to beam back energy to a small target on Earth, relying on wireless power transmission–something humans have been studying for decades but have yet to perfect.”