An atomic iodine laser, a candidate for the direct solar‐pumped gas laser, was excited with a 4‐kW beam from a xenon arc solar simulator. Continuous lasing at 1.315 &mgr;m for over 10 ms was obtained for static filling ofn‐C3F7I vapor. By momentarily flowing the lasant, a 30‐Hz pulsed output was obtained for about 200 ms. The peak laser power observed was 4 W for which the system efficiency reached 0.1%. These results indicate that direct solar pumping of a gas laser for power conversion in space is indeed feasible.