Perovskite and organic solar cells have proven promising alternatives to the widespread silicon-based devices, and now they’ve been tested in space for the first time. Not only did these solar cells perform well, but they’re much thinner and lighter than those currently used and were found to absorb even diffuse light reflected back from Earth.

Silicon has been the solar cell material of choice for decades, and it’s served us well so far. But it may soon be usurped by perovskite, which has advanced so quickly in the last decade or so that its efficiency is already approaching that of silicon.

Organic solar cells are another increasingly attractive option. They may not quite compete with silicon in terms of efficiency, but they’re much thinner, more flexible, and far cheaper to produce in bulk.

And now both perovskite and organic solar cells have been tested in space for the first time. In a new study by researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), two versions of each type of these solar cells were attached to a sounding rocket launched from northern Sweden, which made a short suborbital round trip to a maximum altitude of 240 km (149 mi).