Preliminary Design of a Small Satellite for In-Orbit Demonstration of a Space Solar Power System

A Space Solar Power System (SSPS) is a key to solve the contradictory problem of energy supply against environment degradation, and may take years of decades prior to its commercialization. Therefore, in the SSPS Society in Japan, we organized a workshop where the participants discuss the design of crucial devices such as: Solar Power Satellite (SPS) and a rectenna on the ground. This paper describes the work process of the workshop, and main study results together with the historical overview of the relevant technologies and the motive force to start the satellite design. The workshop has been well operated, and contributed to gather the attendants’ ideas to system realization. The study result on the first demonstration SPS showed that a whole set of a demonstration satellite could be packed into a volume of 3U Cube Sat. It is possible to measure the radiation pattern of the deployable antenna aboard a satellite. The measurement result may verify the availability of the antenna design, and be used for the design of the second demonstration SPS and the final commercial SSPS.