Space Solar Power Moves Toward Mainstream Energy Markets

SSP Bulletin – May 2026

Our Mission: To create the landscape and conditions for commercial Space Solar Power technology by the U.S. to become successful and self-sustaining.

Space Frontier Foundation Updates

• SFF is co-hosting a Space-Based Solar Power event with YPE at SF Climate Week on April 21, featuring John Bucknell (Virtus Solis), Marc Berte (Overview Energy), and Chris Davlantes (Reach Power)  sharing how they’re building 24/7 clean energy. Join us here!

Notable News

• Overview Energy is building a system to beam solar power from geostationary orbit via passively safe near-infrared lasers to existing solar farms on the ground. Founder Marc Berte spoke at FII PRIORITY Miami alongside global CEOs on the future of energy investment, targeting first megawatts on grid by 2030 and gigawatts by 2035, and has signed an MOU with Acwa Power to explore SBSP applications in the Middle East.
  

• Space Solar’s UK media run, including coverage in the Times Radio and the Oxford Clarion, helped push SBSP further into the UK energy mainstream. Together, the pieces framed space solar less as futuristic spectacle and more as a serious contender for firm power, grid support, and even integration with offshore wind infrastructure.
  

• Reflect Orbital is developing a constellation of mirror satellites to redirect sunlight to solar farms after dark, extending usable solar generation hours. Coverage in The New York Times highlights both the potential grid benefits and concerns around light pollution and large-scale LEO deployment. The company has filed with the FCC for an initial demonstration and is seeking collaboration with the astronomy community to mitigate impacts on dark skies.
  

• TerraSpark, a Luxembourg startup founded by former ESA Solaris program leader Dr. Sanjay Vijendran, has raised over €5 million in a pre-seed round to advance its space-based solar power technology. The company is taking a ground-first approach — proving out radio-frequency wireless power transmission on Earth in 2026 before launching an orbital demonstrator in 2027 and targeting its first space-to-Earth power transmission in 2028.
  

• Virtus Solis CEO John Bucknell sat down with Balerion Space Ventures to discuss their orbital energy roadmap, and the company separately announced a breakthrough in wireless power transfer — analytically proving their phased array technology can split a single beam and deliver power efficiently to multiple receivers simultaneously, a capability missing from prior solutions.
  

• Starpath has launched a new line of ultra-thin, ultra-light space solar panels called Starlight Air, weighing just 73 grams per square meter and priced at around $15 per watt — a dramatic reduction from conventional space-grade pricing. The company is breaking ground on a 50 MW production facility this year and plans to be a major consumer of its own panels for off-world infrastructure, with broader ambitions to power lunar and Martian colonies.
  

SSP Systems Enablers

• Researchers at LMU Munich's INPERSPACE project, led by Dr. Erkan Aydin, have developed a dual-molecular reinforcement strategy that enables perovskite solar cells to survive the brutal thermal cycling of Low Earth Orbit, retaining 84% of their initial efficiency after repeated swings between −80°C and +80°C. The cells also achieved over 26% power conversion efficiency, a meaningful step toward affordable, high-performance photovoltaics for space applications
  

• Research continues to broaden around the underlying science and engineering of SBSP. A new Acta Astronautica paper on orbiting solar reflectors examined how structural dynamics affect controllability, while the IEEE Journal on Wireless Power Technologies issued a special issue tied to wireless power in space. 

Promising Use Cases

Image Courtesy: New York Times

War's Effect on Energy

The ongoing US-Israel military conflict with Iran and Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil passes — is a vivid reminder of global energy fragility. If Space Solar Power were operational today, it could deliver continuous power independent of sea lanes, pipelines, or ground infrastructure, directly serving civilian populations cut off from traditional energy supply chains.

SSP Coverage in the News

Outsiders' Perspectives

• Paul Jaffe’s repost of the D3 Space Solar proposal presentation from 2015 was a useful reminder of how long the current wave of progress has been building. His note connected today’s momentum in power beaming and space solar back to earlier defense and national-security efforts that helped seed the field. 
  

• A new UK government report by Frazer-Nash Consultancy, released by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, found that space-based solar power satellites could deliver up to 2 gigawatts of clean electricity to the national grid by piggybacking on existing offshore wind farm grid connections. The study projects that SBSP could reach grid-competitive prices by 2040 if early public investment is secured now.

Experts and Advocates on SSP

• China’s SBSP program continued to be framed in strategic terms, with commentary linking Beijing’s orbital energy plans to energy security, industrial leadership, and geopolitical resilience. As global fuel chokepoints remain exposed, SBSP is increasingly being discussed as a long-horizon strategic asset rather than just a clean-tech curiosity.
  

• Impakter published a detailed analysis of how close SBSP really is to commercial viability, walking through the techno-economics of the UK's CASSIOPeiA design. The piece concludes that the technology is feasible but currently uncompetitive, and that more than half of its future cost uncertainty comes down to a single variable: whether Starship-class launch costs fall as projected.
  

• The Launch Strategist wrote a thoughtful piece on UK company Space Solar and their ambition to deliver commercial SBSP within six years. The author argues that the biggest gap isn't engineering — it's getting infrastructure-scale capital, from pension funds and energy companies, sitting at the same table as the engineers building the satellites.
  

• A new market research report via SNS Insider projects the global SBSP market will grow from $3.46 billion in 2025 to $10.70 billion by 2035, driven by advances in wireless power transmission, government programs in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and rising demand for clean, reliable baseload energy.
  

• The Financial Times covered the accelerating commercial and policy landscape around space-based solar, noting the convergence of falling launch costs and energy security concerns is pushing SBSP up the agenda of governments and investors that previously treated it as a distant concept. View the full SSP Bulletin archive here.