XC05 Supply chain, industrial base and skills
Depth of coverage
At its target depth of L1. What the depth levels mean.
What this layer covers
Materials and critical inputs, manufacturing capacity and rate, qualification routes, standards, workforce and skills demand
Where it ends
Cross-cutting; this is the layer the user's own positioning question lands on
Supply chain, industrial base and skills
Very little in the records held here bears on whether the materials, factories and skilled people exist to build solar power satellites at the rate a programme would need. One record is an award. Space Solar, a UK company, announced on 15 September 2026 a GBP 1.3 million contract from ARIA, a UK government research agency, to beam 5.8 GHz power from a ground transmitter to a receiving antenna in the wing of a high-altitude uncrewed aircraft (CLM-0993). ARIA's programme sets a target, and the award reports no result.
Little cited evidence shows whether the materials, factories and skilled people exist to build a solar power satellite at the rate a programme would need.
Scope. A solar power satellite needs materials, factories and trained people in large numbers. The question is whether they exist, at what rate they could grow, how new parts would be qualified for space, and which standards apply.
Technology readiness in the UK. Technology readiness level (TRL) is a measure of how mature a technology is. A 2020 UK study rated UK readiness at level 3 for nine critical technologies (CLM-0235). For three of the satellite technologies (large mirrors in space, space solar cells and their power electronics, and microwave beam transmission at scale) it gave international levels of 5, 6 and 4. For each of those three it named UK manufacturing experience or capacity as the main UK barrier. The readiness level measures technology maturity, not production rate or workforce (CLM-0235).
An industrial award. ARIA's Enduring Atmospheric Platforms programme funds 18 teams with GBP 70 million over 3.5 years. One is Space Solar, which announced a GBP 1.3m contract for a 5.8 GHz ground-to-aircraft beaming test, and MuWave Limited is developing its transmitter (CLM-0993). The programme's target is a net 300 W of continuous direct current to a 20 kg payload at stratospheric altitude for at least a week. It is not a figure the contract commits the company to. No power has been beamed (CLM-0993). If flown, the test would demonstrate the company's rectenna and beam-control hardware, and no more for the satellite case (CLM-0993). It does not study supply of materials or workforce.
What is missing. No cited source covers critical materials, manufacturing rates, qualification routes, skills demand or applicable standards for a solar power satellite.
Read next. National SBSP programmes: money, flights and law. The beam, for the test's beaming detail. The receiving field.
Records
23 of the 31 records tagged to this layer are published. The rest are not yet published. A record is published only after a second reader has checked it and it has passed every publication check. What the gate checks.
| Record | In plain language | Tier | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLM-0037 | In its unaudited accounts for 2025, the holding company behind the CASSIOPeiA design reported net assets of about 1.3 million pounds and 1.07 million pounds of convertible loans, and said it owed about 859,000 pounds to a related investor. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-0235 | A 2020 UK study rated the UK behind other countries in many technologies for a solar power satellite. For three key ones, large mirrors, space solar panels and power beaming, it named the UK's lack of manufacturing experience or capacity as the main barrier. It rated closing these three gaps by 2050 as medium to very high difficulty, depending on the technology. | T4 | HIGH |
| CLM-0236 | In 2025, all the rockets launched by every country and company in the world together put about 2.7 million kilograms of satellites into orbit, and one company (SpaceX) launched most of them. | T2 | HIGH |
| CLM-0290 | On 29 May 2025 UKAEA, the UK's national fusion energy research organisation, published a press release saying that it and the company Space Solar had finished a demonstration in which robots assembled a small test section of the kind of structure a solar power satellite would need, part-paid for by a UK research council grant whose amount was not published. We have the press release and nothing else; no independent party has confirmed the demonstration or what it showed. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-0533 | All the rockets in the world together put about 2.7 million kilograms into orbit in 2025, about a fourteenth of the mass of one solar power satellite design from 1978 (about a thirteenth for the main 1978 reference design). | T3 | HIGH |
| CLM-0924 | In four parts of NASA's programme the 2001 committee found an analysis missing or a goal without a stated basis: for solar arrays, for how much of the assembly work robots should do, for structures, and for thermal control. Reading these as one pattern, targets set before the study that would tell you what to aim for, is an inference; the committee makes each finding separately. | T3 | MED |
| CLM-0925 | In 2001 the whole of American space solar-cell research - NASA, the Air Force and industry together - ran at about eight million dollars a year, against seventy-five million for ordinary ground solar cells at the Department of Energy. The same committee noted that space hardware is built in tiny quantities and tested heavily, while a power satellite would need millions of each part, and that the manufacturing investment NASA does not usually make might be where the biggest saving is. | T3 | HIGH |
| CLM-0928 | In 2011 an international study group said the last whole-system analysis of space solar power was done in 1997. The American National Research Council had already found the underlying studies missing in four technology areas in 2001. If these are the same gap, which is a reading and not something either body says, it was four years old when the NRC found it and still open ten years after that. | T4 | MED |
| CLM-0934 | In 1988 the NASA centre running the work said the solar power satellite programme did not stop because the technology failed. It stopped because the up-front investment was more than American utilities would risk, and because the energy crisis ended. The same document reports that the centre's own three-year rectenna research at very high frequencies produced encouraging results and no working devices. | T3 | HIGH |
| CLM-0993 | Space Solar has won a 1.3 million pound research contract from the research agency ARIA to help solar-powered high-altitude aircraft keep flying through the winter at UK latitudes by beaming them microwave power from the ground, at 5.8 GHz, into an antenna built into the wing. The programme's goal is a few hundred watts to a small payload for a week at a time. | T5 | HIGH |
| CLM-1208 | A start-up, TerraSpark, says Luxembourg is paying it, through a European Space Agency contract, to build a test that sends power without wires over 100 m on the ground, plus research on solar cells and receiving antennas for power satellites in low orbit. Only the company has said so. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-1241 | TerraSpark's boss argues that space solar power cannot be paid for as one giant project. It should be built in small steps that each prove one thing, so that risky early money can give way, step by step, to the cheaper money that pays for power stations. The article gives no figures. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-1242 | TerraSpark says it will first use wireless power on the ground, where cables are hard to lay, and move parts of the system into space later. The article suggests Luxembourg could become a financial centre for such projects. It gives no dates. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-1243 | The company says it is lining up partners in Japan, the US, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and working with the European Space Agency. It pitches beamed power as something Britain could offer its allies, including for defence and polar sites. It says the ground receivers would be cheap enough to finance even in poorer countries. None of this is backed by named deals or figures in the post. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-1244 | TerraSpark posted a lab video of power sent without wires across half a metre, with words of praise from a former British energy and defence minister. The post gives no numbers on how much power was sent or how efficiently. | T6 | MED |
| CLM-1266 | ESA set up a small expert advisory group and its in-house futures team to steer the studies. It also linked the work to a wider European research network bid that brought together energy, combustion and space groups. | T3 | HIGH |
| CLM-1269 | When the UK's space solar coalition launched in March 2022, its co-chair told a newspaper that a British system could supply about a third of the country's future electricity by the mid-2040s. He said the effort was looking for 75 million pounds over two years at first, and 300 million pounds over five. | T5 | MED |
| CLM-1316 | The world makes about 900 tonnes of raw gallium a year, almost all of it in China, and could make about 1,700 tonnes. Gallium is one ingredient of the high-efficiency solar cells some space designs assume. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-1317 | There is no reliable world total for germanium output, the material many space solar cells are built on, and its price roughly doubled in 2025. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-1318 | The world refines about 1,100 tonnes of indium a year, most of it in China. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-1382 | At its 2025 year end the UK company Cassiopeia Solar owed slightly more than it owned. Its main asset was about 251,000 pounds of patent costs, and it had four staff on average. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-1383 | Almost all of what Cassiopeia Solar owes is owed to other companies in its own group, which the accounts do not name. | T1 | HIGH |
| CLM-1384 | The company has spent about 295,000 pounds on patents, which it writes down over 20 years, and added about 15,000 pounds in the last year. | T1 | HIGH |