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It’s been the stuff of science fiction for decades: to provide gigawatts of cheap, clean power anywhere on Earth, day or night, using satellites that collect and transmit solar energy directly on orbit. Aetherflux, a new startup emerging from stealth Wednesday, says it is developing a novel design for space-based solar to unlock this energy source for the first time.
“What we’re doing at Aetherflux is a different approach of space solar power,” Aetherflux founder Baiju Bhatt said in a recent interview. “As we like to say, it is not your grandpa’s space solar power approach.”
While the concept of space-based solar has been studied for years, Aetherflux’s approach does indeed differ in a few important ways: in number, orbit, and size. Past approaches have mainly studied sending up ultra-expensive, large spacecraft to geostationary orbit, where they could gather sunlight nearly all the time and beam it to a fixed point on Earth. But Aetherflux wants to build a massive constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, each equipped with a solar array, a battery, and a near-optical infrared laser to transmit the power down to the ground. While the satellites will not be constantly exposed to the sun due to their altitude, and each solar array will not collect high amounts of power on its own, the startup wants to put up thousands of these spacecraft to accumulate massive amounts of energy.
The startup was founded by Bhatt late last year, and shifted to his full-time focus after he left his leadership role at financial trading platform Robinhood, which he also co-founded. A pivot to the space industry may seem out of left field, but Bhatt says he’s always been interested in space — his father worked for NASA at Langley Air Force Base — and his advanced degrees are in physics and math at Stanford. The commercialization of space over the last decade has opened new opportunities, he said. “The thing that’s always been my interest is, how do you bring more capitalism to space?”
Baiju Bhatt. Image Credits: Bonnie Rae Mills
Space-based solar is certainly one way to do that. If the company can pull it off, the market could be massive. But first Aetherflux has to prove that it works at all. The company is working toward its first mission now, with the aim of sending up a demonstration spacecraft in the fourth quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026. That spacecraft, which is being built by satellite bus manufacturer Apex, will aim to demonstrate solar energy transmission using the infrared laser; if it’s successful, it will set a distance record for how far power can be transmitted, Bhatt said.
Bhatt admits that space-based solar is entirely theoretical right now. But, “let’s give this technical solution a couple of industrialization revs, and I think the comparison [to terrestrial solar] will be a little bit more even-keeled,” he said.
Aetherflux’s constellation will need to be highly efficient in converting solar power to compensate for the inevitable drop in power that will take place as the energy is transmitted to the solar panels and then to the ground. The “stretch goal,” Bhatt said, is to eventually have each satellite send enough energy back to Earth to power a small neighborhood.
Bhatt, whose net worth tops $1.7 billion according to Forbes, has invested “millions” of his own capital into Aetherflux and is committed to funding through the first demonstration mission, a spokesperson said.
