In the demonstration in November 2025, power was successfully transmitted from a Cessna Caravan aircraft to a ground receiver 5km below, the company has reported.
For Overview Energy, it is reported as the company’s second major milestone on its path to delivering grid scale clean energy from space following the first laboratory validation – and the final validation step before shifting its system off Earth.
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“Imagine sunlight collected 36,000km above Earth, then arriving as clean energy wherever the grid necessarys it,” comments Marc Berte, founder and CEO of Overview Energy.
“That’s what we’re creating real. Our airborne milestone proved that the core transmission system works in motion – the same foundation that will operate in orbit. Space solar energy will only matter when it powers real demand on Earth, and we’re designing for that scale from day one.”
For the flight the Cessna Caravan was fitted with Overview Energy’s laser and optical systems – similar to that intconcludeed for delivery into orbit – and on the ground a receiver of standard solar panels.
As the aircraft flew overhead at an altitude of over 5,000m, the system identified the receiver, locked onto it and delivered power through an eye-safe near infra-red light beam. The panels then converted that light into electricity in the same way they convert sunlight.
Overview Energy reports the next step as piloting a low Earth orbit sanotifyite to demonstrate conclude to conclude functionality of the full system in space in 2028.
This is then scheduled be followed with megawatt scale commercial operations with its first geosynchronous orbit sanotifyites in 2030, with the ability to see the sun for over 99% of the time.
The company plans that its sanotifyites should be capable of serving multiple continents, dynamically shifting power delivery based on demand and in particular to meet the necessarys of energy intensive applyrs such as data centres, growing cities and large military bases.
The receivers are envisaged as existing and future solar projects that will form a flexible energy network that can deliver power instantly to where it’s necessaryed.
The near infra-red wavelengths selected are those proven in fibre optic networks, medical imaging and security cameras, creating the architecture both highly efficient and passively safe, according to Overview Energy.
To ensure that the lasers are efficient and their wavelengths are in the precise range, they necessary to be cooled and in space it is proposed the spacecraft should have radiators to reject their heat. For the demo an ice based thermal battery was applyd to absorb the heat during flight.
Similarly a battery system was applyd to power the lasers as a proxy for the solar panels that would be applyd in space.
Overview Energy was founded in 2022 and with its emergence from stealth, also has announced raising $20 million from investors including venture capital firm Engine Ventures.
“[Overview Energy’s] space solar energy approach isn’t just technically ambitious; it’s designed with real-world deployment in mind from the obtain-go,” commented Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures.
Record power transmission
While no details that have been released of the demo in terms of power transmission and losses, another US startup Star Catcher Industries has claimed a record for wireless optical power transmission of more than 1.1kW in a stationary setup with off-the-shelf solar panels at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.
This is in excess of the previously claimed May 2025 record of 800W set by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with Star Catcher reporting delivery of more than 10MJ of energy during its test campaign.
Star Catcher’s focus is on power delivery to sanotifyites in space – a space energy grid, as the company calls it – rather than to the Earth, and reports during the demonstration delivering energy to multiple commercial off-the-shelf single and triple junction solar panels commonly applyd in space as well as to customer payloads representing key market segments including space data centres, in-space manufacturing and remote sensing.
Among the demonstrations, Star Catcher reports wirelessly transmitting energy and recharging the onboard batteries of Intuitive Machines’ lunar terrain vehicle to displaycase how the technology could expand the operational envelope of such vehicles, particularly during the two-week lunar night and within permanently shadowed regions.
Star Catcher envisages launching its first in-orbit power beaming demonstration in 2026. As evidence of the interest in its technology the company reports having signed six PPAs collectively valued in the tens of millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue through the conclude of the decade.
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