Rocket Experiments and Demonstrations for Microwave Power Transmission (MPT)

We believe nothing is more effective for the development of the microwave power transmission technology than to operate step-by-step experiments and thus to accumulate critical data. We succeeded in two rocket experiments called by MINIX in 1983 and ISY-METS in 1993 of the ISY year, and three demonstrations called by MILAX in 1992, Kansai-demo in 1994 and ETHER in 1995. The objectives of the rocket experiments are to study nonlinear interactions of the microwave power beam in the space plasma environment and to demonstrate the power transmission in space. Both of the rockets were successfully launched to observe interesting plasma wave excitations. We succeeded in the demonstration of the microwave power transmission using a model airplane. The objective of the MILAX is to verify a newly developed active phased array antenna and to demonstrate the feasibility of the microwave power transmission by flying the small model airplane. We also performed a point-to-point microwave power transmission demonstration (Kansai-demo) for ground use, and the power transmission demonstration toward a small airship for the future stratospheric platforms during the WPT'95 conference held at Kobe University. These rocket experiments and demonstrations are reviewed in this paper.