A closer look
Solar panels on Earth are incredibly frustrating because they suffer from a crippling dependency on good weather and the existence of nighttime. Caltech’s MAPLE experiment bypassed the atmosphere entirely by launching the panels into orbit. Because space is free of clouds and the Earth's shadow, these orbital arrays can harvest uninterrupted, brutal solar radiation 24/7. But running a massive extension cord back to Earth isn't viable. Instead, the satellite converts the raw solar energy into targeted microwaves, actively steering the beam through the vacuum of space to a receiving station on the ground. It is the absolute pinnacle of wireless energy transfer, successfully downloading electricity from the cosmos.
