Slashdot Mirror
Solar Sail to be Launched This Year
mad_goldfish writes: "Spaceflight Now is reporting that the Russians are preparing a Solar Sail for launch sometime after September aboard a Cosmos 1 rocket. Apparently most of the components have now been tested and they are getting ready to integrate all the flight components. Just the camera, S-band radio and main computer are yet to be completed."
This site is a great one for more info about solar sails. Exciting technology, I remember watching Cosmos and Segan talking about it.
Here is the co-organisers (Planetary Society) website (deeplinked to avoid crappy flash front page). It's done in conjunction with Cosmos Studios.
There is much more in-depth information and some pictures on both of those sites.
There is more info on the Spacecraft here on the Planetary Society Website.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Basically, what they're hoping to get out of it is space travel on the cheap. If you want to send a probe to the outer parts of the solar system, you can't carry enough fuel to constantly thrust. So you have to slingshot around other planets eking out a small supply of fuel for correctional purposes.
Ion drive, as in Deep Space 1, is a way to lower the amount of fuel needed. This gives a very low level of thrust, but at a constant rate, so cumulative acceleration allows you to reach high speeds. This still needs some fuel, but less fuel than chemical rockets.
A solar sail also gives low thrust which slowly builds acceleration over a period of time. And you don't need any fuel at all! So if you wanted to reach the outer solar system using a solar sail powered probe, then you wouldn't need lots of chemical rocket fuel, or ion drive propellant (Xenon was used by DS1, if I remember correctly) to get you there. You'd perhaps need a small amount for course correction, but your main source of thrust would be the sun.
Less fuel = less weight = cheaper launches.
This is just a prototype. If it works, it could lead to bigger and better solar sails which would make for cheaper spaceprobes to explore the outer reaches of the solar system.
Hmmm. Sounds like this could be another Russian first in space to me...
"Information wants to be paid"
NASA has been working on an alternative to the Solar Sail. The Solar Sail has one major draw back in its design (other than being technically difficult to implement), and that is the farther out in space it goes, the less force is transmitted to it by the solar wind. (Inverse square law.) A geophysicist is currently working on the idea of using a magnetic bubble as a solar sail. The advantage of this approach is that the mag bubble grows as the solar wind decreases. This creates a force that would be relatively constant until the heliopause (the end of the solar winds effective range) is reached.
Sigh...the spacecraft is NOT repeat NOT Russian. It is a creation of the Planetary Society, a non-profit NGO founded by Carl Sagan. The Russians are merely providing an inexpensive launch vehicle, no more.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!