Power in space · Generation, transmission, storage, use · Government and first-party sources
poweringspace
Image of the Day · 2026-08-13

Second Sunrise

Second Sunrise: the beam is a second sunrise; harvested above the weather, it reaches the breakfast table before the sun clears the horizon

Artistic imagining, not existing hardware: a vorticist-style dawn poster built entirely from straight-edged flat planes. A small faceted solar power satellite high in an indigo pre-dawn sky sends a straight gold microwave beam down through angular violet cloud shards to a bright glowing footprint on a vast rectenna field of diamond panels below. At lower left a half-risen faceted amber sun fans hard triangular cream and rose rays over the horizon, where a tiny dark house shows one lit gold window.
An artistic imagining, not existing hardware: the sun is still half-risen, but a solar power satellite in geostationary orbit is already at work. Sunlight harvested above the weather arrives as a microwave beam on a vast rectenna field, in time for breakfast. A second sunrise, drawn as interlocking dawn-colored planes.
← Previous Next →