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24/7 availability was mentioned several times.

Does this mean it's possible to have a satellite in geostationary orbit that is never eclipsed by the Earth? Or does it mean you have more than one satellite serving a power receiver?




GEO satellites are pretty much always in the sun, minus couple hours per year when they hit the (very snall at this altitude) Earth shadow.


GEO orbit is too high for this application, since it would require an insanely collimated microwave beam (or insanely directional). The power loss is proportional to r^2. Google "spherical spreading loss"


That actually is doable. GEO is generally considered the best orbit for a solar power sat. The receiver has to be several kilometers across, but that's good because you don't actually want to fry any birds flying through.

There have even been proposals to put transmitters on the Moon, but that's stretching things.


Sure, but I thought the consideration here was about UAVs and the such :)


You can have orbits that are never eclipsed by the earth, but not GEO.

GEO satellites go dark for about an hour a night for about 6 weeks a year.

https://www.stephenmack.space/blog/geostationary-satellite-e... Contains a video of them


The latter. This is discussed later in the article.




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