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Could China’s lunar laser tower bring Nikola Tesla’s free energy dream to life?

Chinese scientists show how wireless electricity may become reality on the moon, with laser network to beam solar energy into dark craters

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The Earth rises over the lunar horizon. China and the United States have stepped up efforts to establish a long-term presence on the moon. Photo: Shutterstock
Chao Kongin Beijing

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.

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The Harbin Institute scientists behind the study are also affiliated with the National Key Laboratory of Laser Spatial Information and the National Key Laboratory of Aerospace Mechanism, research institutes strategically critical to China’s aerospace advancement.

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