Solar Sail News and Upcoming JPL Missions

abkaiser writes "I had the opportunity to interview a supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The JPL is putting together several missions utilizing solar sail technology. The interview and article detail where NASA and the JPL are in using solar sails for applications and research.You can read the article or skip ahead to the cool pictures of prototype and proposed solar sails. The article addresses NASA's JPL solar sail missions, but not other commercial or private projects like Cosmos 1."

Comments

Who drew that pic?

[neonprimetime]

Did you see the pic in that article?
Look closely and you'll see a well drawn Astronaut!
I wonder if his kid took part in writing this article? :-P

Re:I remember this idea from years ago

[romu105]

The principle that was actually at work in the window-paddle was not, in fact, the conversion of the photons' momenta into kinetic energy of the paddle, which is the principle behind solar sails, but the black side of the paddle would absorb the photon, increase in temperature and warm the air just above the black surface. The air would then expand, causing the paddle to rotate.

Re:I remember this idea from years ago

[Otter]

I had been taught that the greater kinetic energy on the black side caused the rotation. I decided to break with local tradition and do some research before calling you an idiot and a Microsoft spy -- apparently we're both wrong.

Re:Cosmos 1

[Rei]

The real problem isn't that they went with the Russians, but that they went "bargain shopping". There's a reason why they got such a cheap ride (cheaper than the Russians normally offer with Proton or Soyuz): the Volna wasn't designed as a satellite launch vehicle. The USSR wants to get rid of its old ICBMs, and so undertook a program to convert them to satellite launch vehicles.

Soviet ICBM maintenance has been way underfunded (as previously mentioned, they don't want most of them), and so when you modify a poorly maintained launch vehicle, well... it's not too surprising if it fails. More simply, if you launch on any vehicle that doesn't have a very extensive flight record for the type of task that you want to use it for, you're taking a big risk.