The Russian Space Systems Corporation, part of Roscosmos, is developing a project for a promising solar space power plant that will provide electrical energy to hard-to-reach areas of the planet, the state corporation said.
The power plant will consist of two complexes – space and ground. The orbital segment will include a spacecraft that accumulates solar energy and transmits it to Earth.
It is planned to use a laser channel to do this, which will provide a minimum delay and beam divergence. In turn, the ground segment will consist of an array of mobile antennas with batteries, which must receive energy from the spacecraft.
Then they will convert it into electricity and send it directly to consumers.
Scientists see several advantages in this development. So, in open space, the efficiency of using solar energy significantly exceeds the terrestrial indicator. Experts note that such a station can pay off in just 20 years of operation.
Earlier, the Public News Service reported that the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, which was launched to study the Sun, flew through the tail of comet C / 2021 A1, also known as the US astronomer Gregory Leonard who discovered it.
The intersection of the celestial body and the probe occurred solely due to the coincidence of their trajectories. Despite this, Solar Orbiter has collected a significant amount of scientific data on comets.
Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances, scientists were able to study the composition of the particles in the comet’s tail, as well as its magnetic field.