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Chinese scientists have announced a plan to build up an enormous , 0.6 mile ( 1 kilometer ) wide solar king station in space that will beam uninterrupted energy back to Earth via microwaves .
The project , which will see its components loft to a geostationary orbit aboveEarthusing super - laborious rockets , has been dubbed " another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth . "
A Chinese Long March 5 rocket launches the China National Space Administration’s Tianwen-1 Mars rover, lander and orbiter from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island on July 23, 2020.
The Three Gorges Dam , located in the middle of the Yangtze river in centralChina , is the worldly concern ’s largest hydropower project and generates 100 billion kW - hour of electricity each year . According to oneNASAscientist , the dam is so large that , if completely filled , the mass of the water incorporate within wouldlengthen Earth ’s day by 0.06 microseconds .
The Modern project , accord to lead scientistLong Lehao , the chief designer of China ’s Long March rockets , would be " as significant as moving the Three Gorges Dam to a geostationary sphere 36,000 klick ( 22,370 miles ) above the Earth . "
" This is an incredible undertaking to count forward to , " Long contribute during a lecture in October hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( CAS ) , as reported by theSouth China Morning Post . " The energy collected in one year would be equivalent to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth . "
Despite late advances in the tat and efficiency of solar power , the technology still faces some central limitations — such as intermittent cloud cover and most of the atm absorbing solar radiationbefore it hits the ground .
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Scientists have declare oneself a issue of Space - establish Solar Power ( SBSP ) technology which would ceaselessly pile up and convey energy from sun in space , where it is 10 times more intense than at Earth ’s surface .
But building an appropriately gargantuan raiment would take many launches , meaning that most proposals neglect to get off the ground .
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To overcome this challenge , Long and his squad are working on the development of the Long March-9 ( CZ-9 ) reusable heavy - lift skyrocket , which will have a cosmetic surgery capacityof at least 150 tons(136 metrical tons ) .
Besides being used for orbiter , the rocket will also be key to China ’s plans to attain the moon — where it want to build aninternational lunar research baseby 2035 .
China is n’t the only commonwealth eyeing plan for solar satellite arrays . The U.S. companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman , theEuropean Space Agency , and Japan ’s JAXA place agency have also been investigating the technology , with the latter scheduling the launch of a diminished , proof - of - concept satellite this yearto assess its feasibility .
