The dream of harvesting solar power in space and beaming it down to Earth is about as old as the space age itself. It has always been a story of physics, of course, but more importantly, a story of unit economics. The math has never worked. TerraSpark, a Luxembourg-based startup founded last year, is betting that a new set of numbers,starting with a €5.4 million pre-seed round and a modular approach in Low Earth Orbit,might finally change the ending.
The company’s pitch is straightforward: start small, start soon, and sell power not to a grid but to a mine. Or an island. Or a disaster relief camp. By targeting remote, off-grid industrial customers first, TerraSpark aims to prove the commercial viability of space-based solar power (SBSP) with megawatt-scale demonstrations, long before anyone builds a gigawatt station in geostationary orbit. It is a pragmatic, almost Nordic, way to approach a technology that has spent decades as a PowerPoint fantasy.
The modular wedge in Low Earth Orbit
Traditional SBSP concepts are monumental. They envision vast solar arrays, kilometers across, parked in high geostationary orbit, beaming power via microwave or laser to gargantuan ground receivers. The capital required is stratospheric, and the technical hurdles are correspondingly high. TerraSpark’s founders looked at that playbook and decided to start with something that could fit on a spreadsheet.
Their wedge is modularity and a lower orbit. The plan is to launch smaller, standardized "sunsats" into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where development and launch costs are lower and risks are more contained [LinkedIn]. These modules would collect solar energy,unfiltered by atmosphere or night,and transmit it to Earth via radio-frequency (RF) wireless power beaming. The initial target is to deliver power at a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) as low as 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, aiming first for megawatt-scale capacity before scaling to gigawatts [F6S, 2025].
- The customer wedge. Instead of trying to plug into a national grid, TerraSpark’s first customers are intended to be remote industrial operations, island nations, and disaster response zones [LinkedIn]. These are buyers for whom energy is already expensive and logistically fraught, making a premium for reliable, cable-free power more palatable.
- The technical path. The company has outlined a roadmap that calls for wireless demonstrations on Earth in 2026, with the goal of achieving space-to-Earth power transmission by 2028 [thefuturismtoday.com].
- The European angle. The company bills itself as "Europe’s answer to SBSP" [LinkedIn], positioning its effort within a continent keen on energy sovereignty and deep-tech climate solutions.
The team that bridges space and scale
The credibility of such an ambitious, capital-intensive bet rests heavily on the team. TerraSpark’s trio of co-founders brings a specific blend of deep space engineering and high-growth company operations that is rare in the climatetech world.
| Role | Name | Key Background |
|---|---|---|
| CEO | Jasper Deprez | Serial entrepreneur who built Tradler into a global HRTech platform [thenextweb.com]. |
| CTO | Dr. Sanjay Vijendran | Former lead of the European Space Agency’s Solaris initiative for space-based solar power [euronews.com, 2025]. |
| COO | Matthias Laug | Co-founder and former CTO of Tier Mobility, the European e-scooter giant; experience scaling Lieferando and Takeaway.com [TechCrunch, 2020][LinkedIn]. |
Vijendran provides the technical authority and connections to the European space ecosystem. Deprez and Laug bring the operational muscle and experience of scaling capital-intensive, hardware-adjacent businesses to global reach. It is a combination that seems designed to answer two fundamental questions: Can you build it? And can you build a business around it?
The €5.4 million starting gun
In 2025, TerraSpark secured a €5.4 million (approximately $6.2 million) pre-seed round to begin turning its plans into hardware [thenextweb.com]. The investor syndicate is a mix of European venture firms and angel networks, suggesting a belief in the founding team and the strategic importance of the project for Europe.
The lead investors were the French VC Daphni and the Dutch fund Sake Bosch. They were joined by better ventures, Hans(wo)men Group, the Luxembourg Business Angel Network, and the Karaque Club [thenextweb.com]. For a pre-seed round in a frontier technology, the amount is significant. It is enough capital to hire a core engineering team, develop early prototypes, and fund the terrestrial wireless demos planned for next year.
Where the physics gets hard
No analysis of space-based solar power is complete without a clear-eyed look at the hurdles. The risks for TerraSpark are not about market fit or competition; they are about fundamental physics, engineering, and economics at a scale few private companies have attempted.
The primary challenge is the efficiency and safety of wireless power transmission over hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere. Converting sunlight to electricity in space, beaming it via RF, and reconverting it to usable electricity on the ground involves multiple energy conversion steps, each with losses. The company’s claimed 3-cent LCOE hinges on achieving high efficiency across this chain and on the rapidly falling cost of launch,a variable that is outside its direct control.
Then there is the regulatory and public acceptance landscape. Beaming gigawatts of RF energy to the Earth’s surface will require unprecedented spectrum licensing and safety approvals. While the technology is considered non-ionizing and generally safe, public perception of "power beams from space" is an untested variable.
Finally, the competitive field is awakening. TerraSpark is not alone in seeing a new opening for SBSP.
| Competitor | Notable Detail |
|---|---|
| Virtus Solis | U.S.-based startup with a focus on orbital assembly. |
| Space Solar | UK company also pursuing modular SBSP concepts. |
| Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project | Leading academic research effort with successful in-space demonstrations. |
| Reflect Orbital | Developing orbital mirrors for terrestrial solar farm illumination. |
TerraSpark’s answer to these risks is its modular, LEO-first strategy. By aiming for smaller, sooner, and more commercially focused deployments, it hopes to generate revenue and data points before the truly astronomical investments are required. The 2028 target for space-to-Earth transmission is the first major milestone that will separate PowerPoint from power plant.
The next twenty-four months
For TerraSpark, the immediate future is measured in demonstrations and decimals. The pre-seed capital is for building the team and proving the core wireless transmission technology on the ground. Success in the next two years will be defined by a few tangible outputs:
- The 2026 wireless demo. A successful, publicly verifiable demonstration of end-to-end RF power beaming on Earth is the essential first step to de-risking the technology for future investors and customers.
- Strategic partnerships. Locking in anchor customers from the mining, remote infrastructure, or disaster preparedness sectors would provide crucial validation of the business model.
- The next funding round. A venture-scale Series A, likely in the tens of millions, will be necessary to fund the development and launch of the first orbital demonstrator mission.
The back-of-the-envelope calculation is simple but daunting. If a single Falcon 9 launch costs roughly $70 million, and TerraSpark’s first sunsat mission requires a dedicated launch, then the next round of funding must cover not just the satellite but its ride to orbit. The unit economics of their first megawatt of delivered power will be written in those costs.
To become a real energy provider, TerraSpark must eventually beat the incumbent it was designed to circumvent: the diesel generator. In remote locations today, diesel is king,expensive, polluting, and logistically complex, but utterly reliable. TerraSpark’s bet is that beaming clean, constant power from orbit can become more reliable and, in time, cheaper than trucking, flying, or shipping fuel to the ends of the Earth. It is a bet that turns a climate problem into a simple question of cost per kilowatt-hour. For now, the answer is still being calculated, 500 kilometers up.
Sources
- [LinkedIn] TerraSpark Company Page | https://de.linkedin.com/in/matthias-laug-202279226
- [F6S, 2025] Terraspark SARL Profile | https://www.f6s.com/company/terraspark-sarl
- [thefuturismtoday.com] Article on TerraSpark's roadmap
- [thenextweb.com, Unknown] TerraSpark raises €5M+ to beam solar power from orbit to Earth | https://thenextweb.com/news/terraspark-5m-pre-seed-space-based-solar-power
- [euronews.com, 2025] Article on Sanjay Vijendran and TerraSpark
- [TechCrunch, 2020] Tier Mobility executive team announcement | https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/05/tier-mobility-executives/
- [Renewables Now, Feb 2025] Space-based solar firm TerraSpark raises funds for pilot applications | https://renewablesnow.com/news/space-based-solar-firm-terraspark-raises-funds-for-pilot-applications-1292355/