NASA

Six new arrays with a combined capacity of 120 kW will be installed on the International Space Station starting from this year. The panels will be brought to the station with the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft during three resupply missions. The installation of each solar array will require two spacewalks.

A group of scientists in the United States has developed a weather forecasting model designed to better predict the solar irradiation that a given area will receive. The model uses satellite data to estimate the light transmission properties of clouds, a metric often overlooked in standard weather forecasting, but nonetheless vital in modeling PV energy yield.

The airline industry has been among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic; carriers are in ‘freefall’ as Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environment Research in Oslo recently wrote, with governments mulling stimulus packages for airline bailouts. How we react to the coronavirus outbreak is crucial for society as a whole and the solar and energy storage industries can lead the charge in rewriting the status quo.

NASA is on course to more accurately monitor the level of solar irradiance that reaches the earth, with the launch of a instrument for the International Space Station.

The space agency has successfully deployed its new roll out solar array in space for testing. The new panels are lighter and more flexible than the standard folded arrays on older satellites.

Landsat 8 satellite images taken in January capture the four million solar panels installed at the site in Qinghai province, covering an area almost the size of Macau.