HackingTheUniverse

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In what may be the most serious test of solar sail technology to date, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will launch IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) on May 18, 2010. IKAROS will use a rotational maneuver to unfurl and deploy the sail, which is 20 meters across, 0.0075 mm thick and [...]

Space propulsion engines are very different from thrusting engines designed to boost an object out of a planetary gravity well. They must be more efficient, must not require large quanties of expendable supplies (either fuel or thrusting material) and must be able to operate continually. Thrusters: Chemical thrusters currently used in satellite spacecraft don’t offer [...]

Solar sails were first proposed by Kepler almost four hundred years ago. The idea of a solar sail is use a large expanse of a thin, light film to “catch” the pressure of photons in light and use that pressure to accelerate a space craft in a desired direction. Progress at NASA: A Brief History [...]