Startup plans orbital test of laser-based sunlight transmission for satellite power
There’s no power grid in space. Every satellite operates the way a camper works in the woods — carrying only the energy it launched with, burning through it, and going dark when it runs out.
That’s about to face its first real test. A SpaceX rocket is carrying a prototype system designed to beam laser energy between two separate, untethered objects in orbit — something that’s never been done before. Behind it: a startup, a growing queue of orbital data centers, and a space economy quietly running out of runway on its current power model.
A power grid that doesn’t exist — yet
Andrew Rush, Star Catcher’s CEO and cofounder, has a simple way of describing the problem. “Everybody just goes on these little camping trips,” he says. Each satellite launches with its own batteries and solar panels, operates until those resources run dry, and then dims. No shared infrastructure. No way to top up.
The idea itself is old — it appeared in an Isaac Asimov story in 1941 and was studied by NASA in the 1970s — but the economics kept it grounded for generations.
For decades, launching hardware into orbit cost so much per kilogram that building power-generating satellites made little economic sense. Hanieh Fattahi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, notes that generating power in space and transmitting it elsewhere “rarely made practical sense” when launch costs were prohibitive. The idea itself is old — it appeared in an Isaac Asimov story in 1941 and was studied by NASA in the 1970s — but the economics kept it grounded for generations.
Falling launch costs are now rewriting that calculus. As access to orbit gets cheaper, orbital power infrastructure stops being science fiction and starts looking like a business plan, WIRED told.
How Star Catcher’s laser system actually works
Star Catcher’s approach centers on what it calls power nodes — satellites that function simultaneously as solar power plants and transmission lines. These nodes collect sunlight through an array of lenses, then refine it into specific wavelengths that the company says can deliver up to 10 times more energy than diffuse sunlight reaching a typical satellite’s panels.
From there, the system emits a laser beam — Rush describes it as “an ethereal transmission cable” — aimed precisely at a satellite in need of power. Directed and targeted, not broadcast.
Microwave-based solar power transmission is an alternative approach, and Caltech scientists have successfully tested it. Microwaves can carry more total energy, but they require a large receiver. Lasers can hit a much smaller target, meaning existing satellite hardware needs far less modification to accept a charge. In a launch economy still priced partly by weight, that matters: smaller batteries, more room for instruments, or in the case of space data centers, more GPUs.
Protostar: the prototype heading to orbit
The satellite launching this week is called Protostar. It’s a small-scale version of the power nodes Star Catcher eventually hopes to deploy commercially, and it represents the first time the company’s full system will be assembled and tested in the actual environment it’s designed for.
The core experiment: Protostar will beam energy to an untethered cubesat launching on the same mission. As the cubesat drifts away, the system will measure how much power arrives at the receiving panels and compare those readings against predictive models. “Part of this demonstration,” Rush says, “is testing how much power is received by the cubesat as it moves away from Protostar and comparing that against our models.”
If successful, this would mark the first time laser energy has been transmitted between two separate, untethered objects in orbit. Also aboard the same SpaceX mission: Google’s first space-based data center prototype — a signal that the broader orbital economy is already taking shape around exactly the kind of power infrastructure Star Catcher is trying to build.
What the ground tests showed — and what they didn’t
Star Catcher’s confidence in Protostar draws partly from what it accomplished on the ground. Last year, the company set a record by delivering more than 1 kilowatt of power to off-the-shelf solar panels — enough to run a microwave. A space-based test of its satellite-tracking technology followed, covering another critical piece of any functional transmission system.
The gaps are real, though. The Naval Research Laboratory ran a space laser experiment in 2023, operating for 100 days — a meaningful endurance milestone. Yet the beam traveled less than 5 feet, and the system operated at just 11 percent efficiency. Fattahi flags efficiency as a core challenge, alongside heat management, precise long-range tracking, and ensuring equipment survives years in the cold vacuum of space.
Rush is candid about where Star Catcher sits. The company is in the “crawl” phase, working toward “walk,” then “run.” Protostar is the next step — not a finished product, but a real test of whether the models hold up when the stakes are orbital.
The commercial momentum building behind orbital power
The technical questions are real, but commercial interest is already moving. Star Catcher announced a $65 million funding round earlier this year and received a $30 million award from the US Space Force. Ten power purchase agreements — long-term contracts — are signed, with 40 letters of intent from prospective buyers sitting behind them.
That pipeline suggests the market isn’t waiting for perfection. Satellite operators want more uptime and flexibility. Space-based data center developers need power at a scale current satellite architecture simply can’t reliably provide.
Rush sees the longer arc clearly. As orbital power infrastructure expands, it becomes economically viable to place larger, more capable industries in space — he compares what Star Catcher is building to reusable launch vehicles, not just a product but an enabler for everything that follows.
Whether Protostar delivers on that vision this week or surfaces new problems to solve, the test itself is a marker. Watch for the data on how closely received power matches the models. That gap — or the absence of one — will say a great deal about how soon the camping trips end.
Daniel García is an Editor-in-Chief with strong expertise in structural work and engineering principles. He combines this technical foundation with deep knowledge of energy, spatial design, and emerging technologies, bringing a forward-thinking and analytical approach to editorial leadership.
