On a blustery November day in 2025, a Cessna turboprop fought its way through the skies over Pennsylvania. The conditions were miserable for flying: at an altitude of 5,000 meters, crosswinds whipped at 70 knots, nearly matching the speed of the small aircraft itself.

But for the engineers inside, the turbulence was a feature, not a bug. They were there to prove that a sensitive optical system could lock onto a target on the ground and hold it steady, even while being rattled by gale-force winds.

And it worked. As the plane bucked and swayed, a system onboard beamed energy down to a receiver on the ground, maintaining a connection despite the deeply chaotic motion.

This test flight, conducted by the Ashburn, Virginia-based startup Overview Energy, marks a major victory in the quest for transitioning civilization towards renewable energy. While the flight transferred only a small amount of electricity, it represents the first time power has been wirelessly beamed from a moving aircraft to a receiver on Earth.

It is a terrestrial proof-of-concept for a much wilder ambition: launching massive satellite arrays into geosynchronous orbit (GEO) to harvest constant sunlight and beam it back to humanity.

Overview Energy emerged from stealth mode in December to announce the feat, coming out of the woodwork with a working prototype in a field often dominated by vaporware.

The company’s CEO, Marc Berte, emphasized that the flight wasn’t just a PR stunt — it was a systems check for much bigger things to come.

“Not only is it the first optical power beaming from a moving platform at any substantial range or power,” Berte told IEEE Spectrum, “but also it’s the first time anyone’s really done a power beaming thing where it’s all of the functional pieces all working together.”

The logic behind the test is surprisingly sound. Aiming a laser from an airplane is actually harder than aiming one from orbit. An airplane has to deal with atmospheric turbulence and a high angular velocity relative to the ground. If you can hit a solar panel from a jittery Cessna, hitting one from the smooth vacuum of space should be manageable.

Overview calls this development plan “crawl, walk, run.” The airplane test was the crawl. Next comes the walk: a low Earth orbit (LEO) pilot demonstration scheduled for 2028. If that succeeds, the sprint begins in 2030 with a commercial GEO satellite capable of beaming megawatts of power.

Space-based solar power (SBSP) isn’t a new idea. It has been the subject of serious research and enthusiastic daydreaming for decades. Recently, the pace has quickened. In 2023, Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project successfully transferred power in space using microwaves. Just last year, in July 2025, DARPA set a record for terrestrial wireless transmission, sending 800 watts over 8.6 kilometers using a laser.

However, most traditional concepts rely on microwaves to transmit energy. While efficient, microwaves come with heavy baggage. They require massive receiving antennas (rectennas) on Earth, and more importantly, they clutter up the radio spectrum.

Paul Jaffe, a legend in the power-beaming community, explains the issue with what he calls the “beachfront property” of the electromagnetic spectrum — the 2 to 20 gigahertz range used by everything from Wi-Fi to 5G networks.

“The fact is,” Jaffe told IEEE Spectrum, “if you somehow magically had a fully operational solar power satellite that used microwave power transmission in orbit today — and a multi-kilometer-scale microwave power satellite receiver on the ground magically in place today — you could not turn it on because the spectrum is not allocated to do this kind of transmission.”

This regulatory gridlock is partly why Jaffe left his prestigious role as a program manager at DARPA to join Overview as head of systems engineering. After three decades at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and DARPA, Jaffe was converted by Overview’s decision to abandon microwaves in favor of near-infrared waves.

“This actually sounds like it could work,” Jaffe remembers thinking when he first saw the plan. “It really seems like it gets around a lot of the showstoppers for a lot of the other concepts.”

The shift to near-infrared light solves two massive problems at once: spectrum allocation and land use.

Because Overview’s system uses wavelengths similar to sunlight, it doesn’t need to fight for radio spectrum. Perhaps even more compelling is the infrastructure argument. A microwave-based system would require building miles-wide rectennas in remote areas. Overview’s infrared beam, however, can be received by standard solar panels.

This means the system can overlay existing energy infrastructure. The satellites could beam power directly to existing utility-scale solar farms at night or during cloudy weather, effectively turning intermittent solar plants into 24/7 baseload power stations. The company claims the system will eventually “shift power delivery based on demand,” dynamically allocating energy to different continents as the sun rises and sets on the ground.

During the November test flight, the team simulated this by installing standard solar panels on the ground — the same kind you might find on a suburban roof. The plane’s onboard system identified the panels, locked on, and delivered power through an eye-safe beam.

The test setup included some clever engineering workarounds to mimic space conditions. Since the aircraft couldn’t deploy solar panels to power the laser, the team used batteries. And to handle the intense heat generated by the laser — heat that would be radiated away in space — they used a “thermal battery” made of ice, frozen ahead of each flight to absorb the thermal load.

Overview Energy is entering a crowded and competitive field. It has raised $20 million so far from backers including Engine Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, but it faces competition from rivals like Space Solar, Eternal Sun, and Extraterrestrial Power.

The hurdles ahead remain enormous. The physics of power beaming works, but the economics of space launch are unforgiving. To make this commercially viable, Overview needs to put massive amounts of hardware into geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers away.

The company plans to build its satellites on Earth in a folded configuration, unfurling them once they reach orbit. If they can pull it off, the payoff is a source of clean energy that never turns off.

“Imagine sunlight collected 36,000 kilometers above Earth, then arriving as clean energy wherever the grid needs it,” Berte says. “That’s what we’re making real.”

For now, the team is back on the ground, analyzing the data from that bumpy flight over Pennsylvania. They have proven they can keep the light steady when the world is shaking. Now they just have to take that light to the stars.

Tags: energyenergy from spacesolar energysolar panels