November 2017
Radiation protection for space colonists and travellers
... shielding technology. To understand radiation shielding we must first review different types of radiation – photonic (electromagnetic wave) and particulate. Photonic radiation Photons have no rest mass and their impact, and the degree of damage they...
January 2017
New oceans beckon for solar sail technology
...sail and the ship derive their thrust by reflecting solar photons. It is a common misperception that solar sails use the...their interaction with the solar sail produces no significant thrust. Photons have no rest mass but, thanks to quantum mechanics, ...
April 2020
Plasma Clipper - opening the age of sail, in space travel
...Advances in light-sail technology have seen two craft recently deployed in orbit that use the power of photons – particles of light – to ‘sail’ through space. Although the promise of propellant-less propulsion offered by solar energy is an incredibly...
June 2021
The coolest experiment on the ISS
.... Six lasers are focussed on the atoms, meaning whichever way the atom shifts, it will have a stream of photons exerting a force to slow it down. While this process cools atoms to a fraction of a degree above kelvin, for Bose...
26 June 2019
LightSail 2 gets ready to make its debut in space
... history. The notion that a spacecraft could ’sail’ through space propelled by nothing more than the power of photons, may not have ultimately started with Carl Sagan – the philosophy behind light sails started as early...
April 2017
Surviving radiation for space colonisation
... and low energy visible light are generally included in this category. Ionizing radiation can be categorized as photonic or particulate. Photons Photons have no rest mass and their impact is determined by their energy levels. Radio waves have the...
