Power in space · Generation, transmission, storage, use · Government and first-party sources
poweringspace
Image of the Day · 2026-08-28

The Channel Takes the Sun

Sunlight gathered on Mars is poured into a channel, and the channel feeds the rows of cells that cast it into beams.

An artistic imagining, not real hardware. A low-horizon view of a solar-thermal foundry on the Martian surface: rows of rectilinear casting cells recede toward a vanishing point at the right, their glowing orange windows showing molten regolith inside, while faceted concentrator troughs on the left focus sunlight onto a long bright melt channel in the foreground. A polygonal sun hangs in the warm sky above a distant crater rim, and small angular rocks litter the rust-red ground. No text or insignia appears.
An artistic imagining, not existing hardware: a solar-thermal foundry on Mars, where faceted concentrator troughs focus sunlight into a glowing melt channel and rows of casting cells turn molten regolith into structural beams. Solar furnace concentrators and molten-regolith electrolysis are real laboratory processes, but no facility like this exists on Mars. Image: poweringspace.com. Artistic imagining.
← Previous Next →