NASA Launches Micro Solar Sail

greyarea67 writes with news that NASA has successfully used a "microsatellite" (a term given to satellites weighing between 10kg and 100kg) to deploy a "nanosatellite" (a term given to satellites weighing between 1kg and 10kg). The deployed object, the first of six in the microsatellite's payload, was the NanoSail-D flight unit. NanoSail-D masses 4kg and is "about the size of a loaf of bread" until it deploys its solar sail. "...when the NanoSail-D sail is deployed it will use its large sail made of thin polymer material, a material much thinner than a single human hair, to significantly decrease the time to de-orbit the small satellite without the use of propellants as most traditional satellites use. The NanoSail-D flight results will help to mature this technology so it could be used on future large spacecraft missions to aid in de-orbiting space debris created by decommissioned satellites without using valuable mission propellants."

Comments

Re:First Pedant

[LWATCDR]

It is called a living language micro means small and nano means even smaller just as mega means big. Microcomputers where not an order of magnitude smaller then centicomputers. In fact we didn't have centicomputers or decicomputers.
But wait you did have microprocessors and microcomputers used them so it makes sense... Nope just shifts it because we didn't have centiprocessors...
So Microsats and Nanosats are just as valid as microcomputers, microcars, megaprojects and iPod Nanos. It is just a living language co-opting a word.
And if that bothers too bad. I am still ticked off whenever I see organic salt for sale in a market!
There IS NO CARBON IN TABLE SALT!!!!!!!

Wrong way, Silly!

[Bruce Perens]

OK, it might be easier to test a solar sail by de-orbiting something faster, and it's important to not contribute further to orbital debris. But the interesting direction is UP! Get the thing from low-orbit to a higher orbit with the solar sail, like the Japanese have started to do with the IKAROS satellite. Can we get from LEO to geostationary with a solar sail? Can we use it to maintain an orbit without propellant? That means less mass for delta-V to lift out of the atmosphere, and thus less cost but maybe a long time to achieve the final orbit.

Re:First Pedant

[idontgno]

You do realize that unless the suffix part after micro- or nano- is an SI unit, micro- simply means "small" and "nano-" simply means "dwarf"? Only the SI framework applies a powers-of-ten interpretation of those prefixes.

Naive examination of grade-school vocabulary bears this out. No microscope is capable of 1,000,000 x magnification. (Electron microscopes don't count. Optical microscopes existed long before, and are the canonical example.)

Pedantry adds value when it's factually correct.