Space Lasers Head for First In-Orbit Power Test

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes · Last updated: 30 September 2026

Star Catcher is preparing to launch Protostar, a prototype that will test converting concentrated sunlight into a laser beam and directing it at another satellite to deliver power in orbit. The company will measure how much energy a cubesat receives as it moves away from Protostar and compare those measurements to its models. WIRED first reported that the demonstration will be the startup's first in-space trial of beamed power between two untethered objects, following a ground test that delivered more than 1 kilowatt to off-the-shelf solar panels. The primary test will determine whether Star Catcher's space-laser approach to topping up satellites works outside the lab.

How Star Catcher’s system is meant to work

Star Catcher calls its satellites power nodes because each one combines generation and transmission. The devices concentrate sunlight with a set of lenses, then refine that light into wavelengths the company says provide up to ten times more usable power than diffuse sunlight, and finally emit a focused laser beam that can be pointed at satellites that need electricity.

In practice that beam acts like a transmission cable in space. A receiving satellite — in this demonstration, an untethered cubesat — converts the laser illumination back to electricity with its solar panels. The company’s stated goal for the orbital programme is to reduce reliance on heavy batteries and allow operators to trade battery mass for instruments such as additional processors or communications gear.

Star Catcher frames the offering as infrastructure: a distributed set of nodes that supply power to spacecraft on demand. The prototype test will collect measurements of received power as the cubesat moves away, data the firm will use to validate its tracking algorithms and propagation models.

What the in-orbit demo will prove — and what it won’t

The mission’s immediate aim is narrow: show that a laser can be tracked onto an untethered target and transfer measurable power in orbit. Chief executive officer and cofounder Andrew Rush says the test will check how much power the cubesat receives as it moves away from Protostar and compare those readings to Star Catcher’s models. Success would validate the company’s tracking and beam-steering systems at orbital distances.

The demonstration will not, by itself, deliver telecom-grade power or show a full commercial system. Star Catcher’s ground record test delivered more than 1 kilowatt to off-the-shelf panels, which the company compares to enough juice to run a microwave. That is an important step but far smaller than the continuous megawatts a space data center would need.

The firm is explicit about stages: Rush says Star Catcher is still in a “crawl” phase, aiming to move to walking and running as tests accumulate. The Protostar flight is therefore a technology validation, not an immediate market rollout.

Commercial signals: contracts, funding and partners

Investors and customers are already placing bets. Star Catcher announced a $65 million financing round earlier this year and a separate $30 million award from the US Space Force. The company says it has 40 letters of intent from prospective buyers and 10 signed power purchase agreements, which are long-term contracts that signal some commercial commitment.

Those agreements matter because launch mass is expensive: reducing batteries in favor of beamed power could free payload capacity for revenue-generating instruments. The SpaceX mission manifest shows Google's first attempt at a space-based data center is riding the same flight as Protostar, underscoring interest in on-orbit power if reliable beaming can be demonstrated.

Even with that demand signal, the path to wide commercial adoption will require scaling the demonstrator into higher-power nodes and proving long-term reliability in orbit before operators shift fleet design around remote power delivery.

Technical hurdles left to solve

Hanieh Fattahi of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light singles out efficiency as a constraint: a Naval Research Laboratory space-laser test in 2023 ran at about 11 percent efficiency. Low end-to-end efficiency increases the energy the emitter must produce for any given delivery to a receiver, raising power, heat and mass requirements.

Tracking is also critical. Beaming to an untethered, moving target requires high-precision pointing and closed-loop tracking to keep the laser locked onto a receiving array. Star Catcher has also warned that thermal management and ensuring optics and electronics survive years in the cold vacuum of space present additional engineering challenges.

Finally, alternatives such as microwave transmission exist: a team at Caltech has tested transmitting power to Earth with microwaves; that method can transfer larger amounts of energy but requires a massive receiver, while lasers can strike much smaller targets. Each method therefore carries trade-offs between receiver size, beam area and practical application.

Outlook — the case for and against rapid adoption

The bottom line

The Protostar demonstration is a narrowly focused but necessary next step: it will show whether precise tracking and beamed delivery can produce measurable power on an untethered receiver in orbit. Star Catcher has financial backing and early commercial commitments, but ground-level kilowatt tests and prior 11 percent-efficiency space experiments make clear that significant engineering and scaling work remains. If Protostar validates the firm’s models, the next challenges will be improving end-to-end efficiency, proving long-term reliability, and scaling nodes to the higher continuous outputs that larger spacecraft or orbital data centers would require.

What to watch

• Watch for Protostar’s demonstration results and the company’s published comparison of received power versus models; no date has been set.
• Watch for the outcome of the SpaceX mission carrying Protostar and Google’s first space-based data center experiment; no date has been set.
• Watch for any public timeline updates from Star Catcher on when it expects to offer “meaningful commercial power provisioning services in orbit before the end of the decade”; no firm dates have been set.