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Solar sails (also known as lightsails, light sails, and photon sails) are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigation have been proposed since the 1980s.
A diffractive solar sail, or diffractive lightsail, is a type of solar sail which relies on diffraction instead of reflection for its propulsion. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Current diffractive sail designs use thin metamaterial films, containing micrometer-size gratings based on polarization or subwavelength refractive structures, causing light to spread out ...
An artist's depiction of a solar sail. In December 2017, NASA released a mission concept involving the launch, in 2069, of an interstellar probe to search for signs of life on planets orbiting stars in and around the Alpha Centauri system. [1] [2] The announcement was at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union. [3]
The NASA-funded Diffractive Solar Sailing project is developing technologies to fly spacecraft through the cosmos propelled entirely with photons from sunlight. NASA looks to solar sails as a way ...
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Sunjammer (Solar Sail Demonstrator) was a NASA mission intended to demonstrate a solar sail constructed by LGarde, but was canceled before launch.The largest solar sail made as of 2013, Sunjammer was named after a 1964 [1] Arthur C. Clarke story of the same name, Sunjammer, in which several solar sails compete in a race to the Moon. [2]
NanoSail-D2 was a small satellite built by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center to study the deployment of a solar sail in space. It was a three-unit CubeSat, measuring 30 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm (11.8 in × 3.9 in × 3.9 in) with a mass of 4 kg (8.8 lb). [3]
Seven years later Richard L. Garwin developed the first technical specifications for a solar sail. [2] Robert L. Forward credited Wiley for the genesis of the idea in Forward's 1990 patent. [3] Wiley's research and manuscripts for the story are now housed in the Eaton collection. [4]