TAMPA, Fla. — Star Catcher Industries, a startup designing spacecraft to beam solar energy to other satellites in low Earth orbit, has secured funding from Florida’s economic development agency to demonstrate the technology at a former Space Shuttle landing site.
Space Florida is providing a $2 million financial package for the one-year-old venture, Star Catcher CEO Andrew Rush told SpaceNews March 7, with most of the funds supporting tests this summer from Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility at the Cape — one of the longest runways in the world.
Rush said Star Catcher plans to use the facility to demonstrate its ability to beam hundreds of watts of energy to multiple simulated satellites simultaneously from more than a kilometer away, marking a critical proof point for the Jacksonville, Florida-based startup’s technology.
“We are currently doing autonomous power beaming to mock client satellites in our laboratories and will be conducting multiple larger and larger scale tests throughout this year,” said Rush, a former CEO of in-space manufacturing pioneer Made In Space (now owned by Redwire).
“We’re taking a crawl, walk, run approach to our development, with each ground test increasing in distance and power level transmitted.”
While the venture has not set a timeline for in-space demonstrations — or the commercial launch of pay-as-you-go power services from a planned network of 200 satellites — Rush said the economic development agency support is accelerating plans after raising $12.25 million in venture capital last year.
“We view Space Florida as a long-term strategic partner for us and will be looking to expand the partnership in the future for facility build out and other opportunities,” he added.
Last month, Star Catcher also secured a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from AFWERX, the U.S. Air Force innovation arm, to further develop space-to-space power beaming.
Space-to-space power
Star Catcher’s proposed space power grid aims to eliminate power generation constraints in orbit.
The network would beam concentrated solar energy to existing panels on customer spacecraft without modifications, according to the startup, enabling them to produce five to ten times more power than they could independently.
By eliminating the need for larger onboard solar arrays and battery systems, Star Catcher says its technology could enable satellites to support more power-intensive payloads, extend operational uptime and carry out more complex missions while reducing launch mass and costs.
Star Catcher is part of a broader movement exploring space-based solar power. Other startups are developing satellites to beam solar energy to Earth for terrestrial use.
However, power beaming from space remains in its early stages, with no operational systems yet in orbit. Beyond technical hurdles, regulatory frameworks for managing and governing this emerging capability remain undefined, posing additional challenges for widespread adoption.
Rush noted that Star Catcher’s approach avoids many of the regulatory hurdles facing space-to-ground power beaming, as it would not not transmit energy through active airspace or interface with terrestrial power grids.
“Our power beams are essentially focused, variable LED flashlights in space that send energy to a client satellite’s existing solar arrays at wavelengths the solar arrays are highly efficient at converting to electrical energy,” he said.
“In this fashion, our clients do not need to retrofit their spacecraft or design in a custom receiver — they’ll use their existing arrays and designs to get additional power to increase uptime, maintain the desired orbital average power throughout the mission life, or other uses like recovery from an off nominal event.”
After establishing a power grid to serve the LEO market, Star Catcher plans to expand its technology to higher orbits.
