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• Tiangong expected to play a key role in China’s space solar power station project by providing a testing platform for high-voltage electric devices

• Space power station could point beam to almost any location, making it an ideal to power military equipment or remote outposts, says project team

China’s space station will join a controversial project to collect solar power from space and send it to Earth in a high-energy microwave beam, according to a senior scientist.

The Chinese space station Tiangong – which means “heavenly palace” – became fully operational when the last major service module, Mengtian, docked this month.

Some space scientists have suggested Tiangong – the largest infrastructure in orbit owned and run exclusively by a single country at present – can change the pace or direction of the space race.

Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station, told a conference in Wenchang, Hainan, on Tuesday that Tiangong would play a key role in China’s space solar power station (SSPS) project by providing a testing platform for high-voltage electric devices and in helping assemble ultra-large structures.

In a lecture at the conference attended by space scientists and engineers from around the world, Yang said the space station had the resources and capability to do demonstrations, “verify key technologies, accelerate technological breakthroughs and accumulate in-orbit experimental data” for the SSPS project.

He said these would help China meet its peak carbon and carbon neutral goals.

A paper published by the project team in the journal Chinese Space Science and Technology in June reported that the full-sized Chinese space solar power plant would be a 1km-wide structure beaming gigawatt-power microwaves to Earth from a distance of 36,000km (22,4000 miles).

Unlike traditional solar farms that work only during the day, the space-based solar array would collect and transmit energy 24 hours a day, it said.

The microwave beams could penetrate clouds and be picked up by an antenna on the ground to generate electricity.

Operating in the geostationary orbit, the space power station could direct the beam to almost any location, making it an ideal candidate to power military equipment or remote outposts, the team said. However, some researchers have also speculated that the beam could be used as a weapon.

The European Union and many countries, including Japan, Britain and the United States, have launched research programmes to develop similar technologies.

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