Legendary inventor Nikola Tesla’s dream of transmitting electricity wirelessly never became a reality on Earth.
But more than a century later, Chinese scientists believe the concept could find its first practical application on the moon.
Their proposal focuses on the moon’s south pole, where crater rims receive near-continuous sunlight while permanently shadowed regions nearby – believed to contain valuable “water ice”, or frozen water trapped on or beneath the lunar surface – remain in perpetual darkness.
Instead of relying on long cables or heavy batteries, future lunar rovers exploring these craters could receive power through laser beams transmitted from solar-powered stations positioned on nearby sunlit peaks, according to researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology.
The team outlined an optimised deployment strategy for such a lunar laser power transmission network in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration.
03:54
The race for the moon’s south pole: can China beat Nasa’s 2028 deadline?
