Star Catcher successfully demonstrated its solar power beaming tech on Earth on Friday, transferring energy roughly the length of the football field where the Jacksonville Jaguars play.
The demo involved Star Catcher’s system collecting solar energy, then transmitting it more than 100 meters to standard solar arrays—the longest distance power transfer the startup has attempted so far. The test also proved that the startup’s proprietary system can work with solar arrays already in orbit.
The grand vision: Friday’s demo was an early step toward the startup’s long-term goal of building a power grid in LEO that can deliver concentrated solar power to a spacecraft. Once it’s operational in orbit, the technology could allow smaller sats to take on more power-intensive missions, provide power to sats nearing the end of their life, or help spacecraft that struggle to deploy (for example, only one solar array unfurls).
The company closed a $12.25M seed round in July, led by Initialized Capital and B Capital.
For its next test this summer, which is backed by Space Florida, Star Catcher will attempt to transmit hundreds of watts more than a kilometer. The startup will then take its tech to orbit next year, CEO Andrew Rush said.
Pie in the sky: If this all seems a little too much like science fiction to be viable today, Rush said he already sees an existing market—and has more than two dozen letters of intent signed by customers worth potentially billions of dollars to prove it. Star Catcher also boasts two paying customers—Space Florida and AFWERX—and Rush said more announcements are forthcoming on the startup’s first power purchasing agreements.
“We are seeing a lot of demand and interest and need for this,” he said. “We’ve put a lot of energy—pardon the pun—into making this something that you don’t have to win a Nobel Prize for it to work….It’s an integration and control and engineering challenge, not a science challenge.”
