(A 2011-2012 NASA NIAC Phase 1 Project)
ABSTRACT -- Read full report at http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/SPS_Alpha_2012_Mankins.pdf
The vision of delivering solar power to Earth from platforms in space has been known for
decades. However, early architectures to accomplish this vision were technically
complex and unlikely to prove economically viable. Some of the issues with these earlier
solar power satellite (SPS) concepts – particularly involving technical feasibility – were
addressed by NASA’s space solar power (SSP) studies and technology research in the mid to
late 1990s. Despite that progress, ten years ago a number of key technical and
economic uncertainties remained. A new SPS concept has been proposed that resolves
many, if not all, of those uncertainties: “SPS-ALPHA” (Solar Power Satellite by means of
Arbitrarily Large Phased Array).
During 2011-2012 the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program supported a
Phase 1 “SPS-ALPHA” project, the goal of which was to establish the technical and
economic viability of the SPS-ALPHA concept to an early TRL 3 – analytical proof-of concept
– and provide a framework for further study and technology development. The
objectives of this project were to: (1) conduct an initial end-to-end systems analysis of the
SPS-ALPHA concept in order to determine its technical feasibility; (2) identify and assess
in greater detail the key technology challenges inherent in the architecture (including
figures of merit for each critical technology area); (3) conduct an initial evaluation of the
economic viability of the concept (as a function of key performance parameters); and, (4)
define a preliminary roadmap for the further development of the SPS-ALPHA concept.
This report presents the results of that study.
This work was performed under NASA Grant NNX11AR34G.
