Overview Energy, a solar aerospace startup based in northern Virginia, has been awarded a U.S. Air Force contract to deploy its orbit-to-grid energy technology in what it calls “constrained and contested logistics environments.”
The company said its work will provide support for Department of War operations, examining how the technology can help power large U.S. military installations in remote locations, reducing reliance on fuel supply chains.
Overview identified two such locations in its announcement: Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska and Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, where fuel supply chains could become constrained in crisis situations.
“We admire the Air Force’s leadership in exploring new approaches to energy resilience,” said Overview Energy CEO Marc Berte in a statement. “In many of these environments, energy is defined by how fuel can be delivered. Transforming that expands what the warfighter can do and how long they can operate.”
The company’s technology involves placing satellites in geosynchronous orbit to collect solar energy and beam it to existing infrastructure on earth using lasers tuned to the infrared spectrum.
Similar to other space-based solar energy projects by Volta Space Technologies and researchers from Caltech, Overview’s technology allows for continuous power generation that can be directed toward parts of the earth where the sun has already set.
Overview’s equipment has already been used to transfer energy to the ground from an airplane, and the company is targeting energy transfer from low-earth orbit for early 2028.
By capturing solar energy without atmospheric interference and operating outside the day-night cycle, the company says it can deliver roughly five times as much energy as terrestrial solar installations using the same sized array.
News of the Air Force contract comes on the heels of a recent announcement that Overview Energy will deliver solar energy to Meta from a space-based array up to 1 GW in size, starting in 2030.
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