January 2017
New oceans beckon for solar sail technology
...to it, to higher and higher speeds. And it can do so without the use of any fuel. It is a common misperception that solar sails use the solar wind for propulsion - this is incorrect This last point is hugely significant. Given that launching anything...
October 2015
Russian business: a long road to the stars for private space initiative
.... They made a proposal to the Russian gas industry to light up the northern territories with a cosmic mirror based on solar sail technologies. The gas people didn’t take an interest in the mirror, but they were interested in satellite communication...
February 2016
Searching for water in the Solar System
...abundance of volatile-rich planetesimals migrated from the outer Solar System (ie, beyond Jupiter). Observations of increasing abundance ...JAXA is even proposing an ambitious mission with a solar-sail spacecraft that would perform a sample return from ...
August 2017
Big science from small spacecraft
... to use ‘green’ propulsion. Another project under development is the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, which will deploy a solar sail that catches sunlight to steer a flight path taking it from a lunar trajectory to a rendezvous with a Near-Earth Asteroid...
