I wonder if a satellite that would collect and beam down solar energy using microwaves would help future rovers eventually. Maybe NASA wouldn't do that in fear of the beam damaging something they want to study.
There's not much atmosphere on Mars (approx. 0.6% of Earth's) to get in the way of the sun, so there's not much advantage to beaming down solar energy. You might as well just have solar panels on the rovers themselves, which unsurprisingly is exactly what NASA did.
But solar panels in space can be much larger and dust free.
Wouldn’t they have to beam that energy down to a dust-free sensor?
I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that a microwave receiver is less sensitive to dust than solar panels. Also, if you've got a large solar array in space sending a focused beam of energy to a rover, the receiver can be hit with much more power than a same sized solar panel, which can more than offset any losses from dust on the receiver.