Powered by the Sun
A group of students from the Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the University of Twente are taking this concept to the limit by racing a solar-powered car in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. The route will take Solar Team Twente, and more than 50 teams from 30 countries on a challenging journey across Australia. To be successful, their car RED-E, must travel the 3000 km from Darwin to Adelaide using only the energy of the Sun and a bare minimum of maintenance.
This is very similar to the journeys taken by ESA’s space missions, and on this particular occasion Solar Team Twente have benefited from a gift of spare solar panels from ESA’s JUICE mission. Like RED-E, JUICE will take the capabilities of solar power to the limit by traveling to Jupiter, five times farther away from the Sun than Earth.
