{"id":877811,"date":"2026-06-19T08:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T08:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/877811\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T08:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T08:17:17","slug":"the-chinese-scientists-hoping-to-use-a-space-solar-plant-to-power-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/877811\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chinese scientists hoping to use a space solar plant to power the world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Using a few mirrors, solar panels and a microwave transmitter, Fan Guanheng and his team can send power over 100 metres (330 feet) through the air. But they are dreaming much bigger \u2013 36,000km (23,460 miles) bigger.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The team at Xidian University in Xian, capital of northwest China\u2019s Shaanxi province, are testing hardware that could one day be used to generate power in space and send it back to Earth.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">On a sweltering June morning, the team were measuring how well light was concentrated by a 4.8-metre, dome-shaped mirror suspended from a 75-metre-tall tower.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The futuristic technology boiled down to three steps, said Fan, an associate professor at the university\u2019s school of mechano-electronic engineering.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">First, the mirrors focus sunlight onto solar panels, generating electricity.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Then, the electricity is converted into microwaves and beamed to an rectenna, a kind of antenna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using a few mirrors, solar panels and a microwave transmitter, Fan Guanheng and his team can send power&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":877812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[74,356734,917,356736,356733,170,916,159,783,356737,67,132,68,49047,356735,269524],"class_list":["post-877811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-china","tag-duan-baoyan","tag-earth","tag-fan-guanheng","tag-fresnel-lenses","tag-japan","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-sps-alpha","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-xian","tag-xidian-university","tag-zhuri"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116775790257602257","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}