Japan, the country that likes to terrify us with new and terrifying technology, has announced that they are building giant solar panels to be shot into space in an attempt to garner delicious, solar energy. While the word "death star" wasn’t necessarily thrown around, the news definitely conjured up the image.
The company called, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or, the appropriately evil-sounding acronym, JAXA, is behind the Space Solar Power System (SSPS) and hope to have it running by 2030.
Here’s how it would work. A satellite-esque object will be launched into orbit, roughly 22,400 miles above, say, you. The satellite would then garner the sunbeams which are, a lot of the time, blocked by irritating natural elements like clouds, and literally shoot the rays to base stations on Earth.
On February 20th, JAXA is going to be testing the transmitters and, even if they work without, say, exploding half a city, don’t expect them to be in operation anytime soon. Still, according to the researchers, one satellite could power 500,000 homes.
Now, the question is, what happens when an airplane accidentally flies through a directed beam of laser energy? We’ll just have to see.
If you can read Japanese, you can read more about it here, on the JAXA site.
