A message for the future

Jacky Song, Riya Jain | January 28, 2026

We are proud to announce that we’ve recruited an extensive team for the RCOS 2026 season, with engineers, physicists, software developers, and mathematicians from a variety of backgrounds. It is an exciting time at Project Elara! But before we start work, I want to record down some of my hopes and wishes for the future.

This is a crucial time — in the next few months, we will undertake some of most ambitious and technologically-complex endeavors in Project Elara’s history. There are a lot of challenges facing us, but also a lot of reasons to be hopeful, because if we stay firmly committed to our mission, we will have realized the world’s first open-source prototype for space-based solar power. In doing so, we will prove that scientific knowledge and advanced technology is not limited to corporations and governments developing it behind closed doors — it is capable of being done by a not-for-profit organization, run with radical transparency, whose work is shared with the entire world.

Our mission is not just a technological mission — it is more importantly a moral mission. Our promise of "virtually free, limitless energy" isn't just fantasy, as has been the case of many power technologies throughout history — it is our explicit goal. This isn't a technology firm promising to provide abundant, free energy — those promises are not backed by anything, and can be (and often are) broken at any time. Our technology is guaranteed to be for the public good and for the entire world. By being not-for-profit and releasing everything we do as open-source, we are determined to not profit off our technology and make it as low-cost and as widely available as possible. This is something built into the very core of Project Elara, a concrete guarantee instead of idle words and false promises.

Our technology requires no exotic fuels –– it is fueled by pure sunlight, a limitless source of free energy that can't ever be owned or taken away by anyone. It is open-source hardware that anyone can build, not a proprietary machine controlled by a government or megacorporation. We choose to develop our technology responsibly and with strong guardrails to protect it from being abused, and our open-source nature makes it auditable by people around the world.

We live on a beautiful planet, the only planet that we know of where life can exist. We live under the light of a lifegiving star that will never disappear from the sky. To us, it is only natural that we develop the technology to tap into its immense, everlasting power, and provide it to every human being on Earth.

Today is only one small step in the long road to turning our vision into reality. But it is a special moment. As we look with hope and optimism towards the future, let us not forget where we began. I have faith that just as the seeds of the giant redwood come from a tiny seed, our team, even if small today, can one day change the world.