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You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing.
The battle to dispel smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve the energy crisis is moving to space.
Chinese scientists are mulling the construction of a solar power station 36,000 kilometers above ground.
If it comes to fruition, the solar power station will become the largest-ever space project, surpassing the scale of the Apollo project and the International Space Station.
The power station will be a super spacecraft on a geosynchronous orbit equipped with huge solar panels. The electricity generated will be converted tomicrowaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth.
An economically viable space power station will be really huge, with the total area of the solar panels reaching 5 to 6 square kilometers. That's equivalent to the size of 12 Beijing's Tian'anmen Squares, the largest public square in the world, or almost the size of two New York Central Parks.
People on Earth will possibly see the station with naked eye, like a star in the night skies.
But why build a power station in space? Scientists explain that the electricity generated from the ground-based solar plants fluctuates with night and day and the weather, while a space-based generator can collect energy 99 percent of the time.
When space solar energy becomes the main energy, people will no longer worry about smog or the greenhouse effect; and power cables will not be needed anywhere in the world.
