The European Space Agency’s Director General Josef Aschbacher this week announced on LinkedIn that the agency will “propose a Space-Based Solar Power preparatory programme to Member States called #SOLARIS.” That means Europe is getting primed to move forward with its own proprietary SBSP program, independently. Put another way, this is not going to be another exercise in admiring the problem. Laura Winter speaks with Sanjay Vijendran, ESA’s Mars Exploration Strategy Team Leader and Future Mars Studies (MarsX Team) Coordinator, and the lead for the agency’s Space-Based Solar Power efforts; John Mankins, a former NASA physicist, now President of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, who designed the Solar Power Satellite concept, Alpha - Mark 3; and Peter Garretson, an American Foreign Policy Council Senior Fellow, coauthor of “Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space”.

To get a grounding in just what Space-Based Solar Power is, please go here first: https://defaeroreport.com/2022/08/15/the-downlink-aug-14-22-space-based-solar-power-and-the-u-k-s-bet-that-science-fiction-may-become-science-fact/