solar sail
Solar Sails Could Reach Mars in Just 26 Days
A recent study submitted to Acta Astronautica explores the potential for using aerographite solar sails for traveling to Mars and…
Are Chemical Rockets or Solar Sails Better to Return Resources from Asteroids?
If and when we ever get an asteroid mining industry off the ground, one of the most important decisions to…
A new Kind of Solar Sail Could let us Explore Difficult Places to Reach in the Solar System
Solar sailing technology has been a dream of many for decades. The simple elegance of sailing on the light waves…
Tiny NEA Scout Solar Sail Mission to Chase Asteroid
NEA Scout will hitch a ride to an asteroid on the Artemis 1 Moon mission.
LightSail 2 has Been Flying for 30 Months now, Paving the way for Future Solar Sail Missions
Even after 30 months in space, The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission continues to successfully “sail on sunbeams” demonstrating solar…
NASA is Testing out new Composite Materials for Building Lightweight Solar Sail Supports
Space exploration is driven by technology - sometimes literally in the case of propulsion technologies. Solar sails are one of…
A Small Satellite With a Solar Sail Could Catch up With an Interstellar Object
When Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever observed passing through the Solar System, was discovered in 2017, it exhibited some…
LightSail 2 Has Now Been in Space for 2 Years, and Should Last Even Longer Before Re-Entering the Atmosphere
The Planetary Society's crowdfunded solar-sailing CubeSat, LightSail 2, launched on June 25th 2019, and two years later the mission is…
Want the Fastest Solar Sail? Drop it Into the Sun First
A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy shows how a "Sun Diver," a light sail that dives…
LightSail 2 is Still Solar Sailing, But it’s Getting Lower and Lower with Each Orbit
LightSail 2 deployed it solar sail five months ago, and it's still orbiting Earth. It's a successful demonstration of the…