China Achieves Key Breakthrough in Space Solar Power Station Project

China has taken a critical step toward building a space-based solar power station, successfully demonstrating the world’s first ground verification system capable of beaming microwave energy to multiple moving targets simultaneously. The breakthrough, achieved by the “Zhuri” (Chasing the Sun) project team at Xidian University, brings the ambitious vision of harvesting solar energy from orbit closer to reality.

According to People’s Daily, the system achieved a direct current (DC)-to-DC transmission efficiency of 20.8% with an output power of 1,180 watts over a distance of approximately 100 meters. In a separate drone experiment, the system delivered a stable 143 watts of power to a drone flying at 30 km/h at a distance of 30 meters, demonstrating in-flight wireless charging capability.

The Sun-Chasing Project

The Zhuri project, named after the ancient Chinese myth of “Kuafu Chasing the Sun,” was officially launched at Xidian University in December 2018 under the leadership of Duan Baoyan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The project aims to develop a space solar power station (SSPS) — a concept where large solar panel arrays deployed in Earth orbit collect solar energy continuously, unaffected by weather, atmospheric attenuation, or day-night cycles.

As CGTN reported, the energy would be converted to microwaves and transmitted wirelessly to receiving stations on Earth, where it is converted back to electricity and fed into the power grid. Duan Baoyan described the concept as “deploying a microwave charging station in a predetermined orbit in space.”

China’s approach is built on the innovative OMEGA (欧米伽) design, proposed by Duan’s team in 2014. This concentrated solar power architecture uses a spherical concentrator to focus sunlight onto photovoltaic cells, offering advantages in structural efficiency and energy conversion compared to US and Japanese designs. The name OMEGA, derived from the Greek letter Ω, reflects the distinctive shape of the design.

From Static to Dynamic: The Critical Leap

The concept of space-based solar power dates back to 1968, when American scientist Peter Glaser first proposed the idea. China began its own research in 2006, and Duan’s team proposed the OMEGA design in 2014. The team’s initial success came in June 2022, when they completed the world’s first full-chain, full-system OMEGA-SSPS ground verification system, known as “Zhuri 1.0.” That system achieved a DC-to-DC transmission efficiency of 15.05% over 55 meters with a transmission power of 2,081 watts and beam collection efficiency of 87.3%.

However, fixed-point power transmission was only the beginning. As Duan Xuechao, Deputy Dean of the School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering at Xidian University, noted, the 2022 system was essentially a static demonstration — like stretching an “invisible wire” between two fixed points. Real-world applications require powering spacecraft, drones, and ground vehicles that are constantly in motion.

Li Xun, a professor at the same institution, explained the breakthrough: “In simple terms, it’s a ‘two-way journey’ — the system tracks and corrects simultaneously, ensuring energy is sent precisely to the target without deviation.” The team developed a closed-loop control system based on reverse beam guidance, where the receiving end sends a guidance signal and the transmitting end captures and calculates the precise position in real time.

The Global Times reported that the research team encountered numerous challenges in the early stages of development, with targets frequently being lost and transmission beams deviating from their intended paths. “Communication delays caused data to lag behind — the receiving antenna was at one point, but the beam hit another,” Duan Xuechao recalled. The team overcame these obstacles through advances in high-precision tracking control, antenna miniaturization through integrated design, and efficiency improvements using new gallium nitride diode components capable of handling greater power fluctuations.

Technical Milestones and Expert Validation

The latest “Zhuri 2.0” system represents a quantum leap forward. Key achievements include:

• One-to-many capability: A single transmitter system can simultaneously power multiple high-speed moving targets
• Efficiency gains: DC-to-DC efficiency improved from 15.05% to 20.8%
• Beam collection: 88.0% beam collection efficiency over 100 meters
• Drone charging: Successful in-flight wireless power delivery at 143 watts to a drone traveling at 30 km/h

An expert evaluation committee from the Shaanxi Technology Transfer Center declared that “Zhuri Project 2.0 has achieved a critical leap from static principle verification to dynamic multi-target engineering application, and overall has reached the international leading level.”

A Global Race for Space-Based Energy

China is not alone in pursuing space solar power. The United States, Japan, South Korea, and European nations are all advancing their own programs. Caltech demonstrated in-orbit microwave transmission in 2023, and Elon Musk has proposed deploying 100 GW of space solar satellite energy networks annually. Japan’s JAXA conducted airborne microwave transmission tests from a commercial aircraft at 7,000 meters altitude in December 2024. The UK has included space solar power in its national energy and space strategies, while the European Space Agency positions SSPS as a “long-term viable clean baseload power option.”

However, China is currently the only country to have successfully demonstrated a full-chain, full-system ground verification with one-to-many moving-target wireless power transmission, giving it a leading position in this strategically important domain.

Implications Beyond Energy

The potential applications of space solar power extend far beyond clean electricity generation. According to Fan Guanheng, a professor at Xidian University, the technology could enable typhoon mitigation by injecting 0.5 to 10 GW of microwave energy into specific areas of a storm to disrupt its structure. It could also power high-thrust electric propulsion systems for asteroid deflection, support lunar and Mars base operations — solving the challenge of 14-day lunar nights — and provide emergency power to disaster zones and remote mountainous areas.

Duan Baoyan outlined an ambitious vision: if 3,600 stations were deployed at 0.1-degree intervals in geostationary orbit, each generating 1 GW, they could provide approximately 10,000 TWh annually — about one-third of global electricity demand. The energy could also power seawater desalination and hydrogen production at industrial scale.

Additional applications include providing “space charging stations” for satellites, eliminating the need for large solar panels on spacecraft; enabling intercontinental power transmission via relay satellites; supporting orbital debris removal and in-orbit propellant refueling; and even powering asteroid resource extraction.

The Road Ahead

China’s national roadmap follows a “two major steps, three minor steps” strategy: a megawatt-class orbital test station by 2030, followed by a gigawatt-class commercial space solar power station by 2050.

Significant challenges remain. Scaling from 100-meter ground tests to orbital distances of 36,000 kilometers for geostationary orbit, assembling kilometer-scale structures in space, managing extreme thermal environments, ensuring safe and targeted microwave transmission without interference, and reducing costs to economically viable levels are all formidable hurdles.

Yet the Zhuri team’s progress demonstrates that what was once science fiction is steadily becoming engineering reality. From the first concept in 1968, to China’s entry in 2006, the OMEGA design in 2014, Zhuri 1.0 in 2022, and now Zhuri 2.0 in 2026 — each step has brought the dream closer. As Duan Baoyan said: “Only by pushing the spirit of continuous improvement in scientific research to the extreme can we achieve breakthroughs in targets.”

On the test field at Xidian University, a 75-meter steel tower stands as a monument to human ingenuity. Beneath it, researchers continue their daily experiments, watching LED lights glow on drones powered by energy transmitted through the air. The dream of drawing clean, limitless energy from space is no longer a question of if, but when.