SOLAR SAILS

William Shatner sends a message to Voyager 1, Cassini crashes into Saturn, asteroid-seeking OSIRIS-REx gets a gravity assist, and The Planetary Society's citizen-funded solar sailing spacecraft LightSail® 2 is making news again. Robert Picardo is here to tell you all about it in this month's Planetary Post. Get space updates delivered straight to your inbox: http://planet.ly/TI0Pf Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://planet.ly/ytsubscribe Follow us! Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/exploreplanets Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/planetarysociety On the web: http://www.planetary.org Join us: http://planet.ly/rfzIS About The Planetary Society: The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

This animation details the piece by piece construction of the LightSail 2 spacecraft as well as its maneuvers in space. Learn more at sail.planetary.org. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://planet.ly/ytsubscribe Follow us! Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/exploreplanets Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/planetarysociety On the web: http://www.planetary.org Join us: http://www.planetary.org/join Stay in touch with our monthly e-newsletter: http://www.planetary.org/connect About The Planetary Society: The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

LightSail 2, a citizen-funded spacecraft by The Planetary Society, will demonstrate to the space community that solar sailing is a viable and inexpensive way of navigating the cosmos. Learn more at sail.planetary.org. Voiceover: In 2015, The Planetary Society, the world’s largest non-profit space organization, launched its citizen funded spacecraft, LightSail 1. The test spacecraft successfully deployed its reflective mylar sails, proving that our sail deployment technology works. Now we are taking the next step with LightSail 2. We will demonstrate to the space community that solar sailing really works and is an inexpensive way of navigating the cosmos. We’ll be launching on onboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket. LightSail 2 will go deeper into space and attempt the first controlled solar sail flight in Earth orbit. The world will be watching as our little satellite propels us into the future of space exploration. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://planet.ly/ytsubscribe Follow us! Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/exploreplanets Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/planetarysociety On the web: http://www.planetary.org Join us: http://www.planetary.org/join Stay in touch with our monthly e-newsletter: http://www.planetary.org/connect About The Planetary Society: The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

Bill Nye talks solar sailing with LightSail 2 on Facebook Live with Bruce Betts and Danielle Gunn. Featuring a special appearance from Robert Picardo. Support the LightSail mission at planetary.org/launchpad Filmed live on Sept 7th, 2017 from Planetary Society headquarters in Pasadena, CA. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://planet.ly/ytsubscribe Follow us! Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/planetarysociety Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/exploreplanets Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/planetarysociety On the web: http://www.planetary.org Join us: http://www.planetary.org/join Stay in touch with our monthly e-newsletter: http://www.planetary.org/connect About The Planetary Society: The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

New research paper from the Cool Worlds Lab about one the most exciting missions ever proposed, "Starshot". Starshot plans to send tiny probes to distant planets beyond our Solar System, the first true interstellar spacecraft. To do this within our lifetimes requires a very fast probe, reaching one-fifth the speed of light. That means Einstein's theory of special relativity starts to become important and so in our new paper, explained in the video, we figured out how much of a difference that makes... ::More about this Video:: ► David Kipping (2017), "Relativistic Light Sails": https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.04310 ► Live stream of the Breakthrough Discuss meeting at Stanford (04/20-04/21): https://www.facebook.com/BreakthroughPrize ► Breakthrough Initiatives website: https://breakthroughinitiatives.org ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu ► Background music by Thomas Bergersen "Final Frontier": http://www.thomasbergersen.com ::Playlists For Channel:: Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► http://bit.ly/NewCoolWorlds Cool Worlds Research ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsResearch Guest Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsGuests Q&A Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsQA Science of TV/Film ► http://bit.ly/ScienceMovies ::Follow us:: SUBSCRIBE to the channel http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsSubscribe Cool Worlds Lab http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu Twitter https://twitter.com/david_kipping Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cool.worlds THANKS FOR WATCHING!! ヅ

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to us at about four light years away but it would take us thousands of years to get there by rocket. Some people just don't have that much patience. ------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe to Fw:Thinking: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c... For the audio podcast, blog and more, visit the Fw:Thinking website: http://www.fwthinking.com Fw:Thinking on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fwthinking Jonathan Strickland on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jonstrickland Fw:Thinking on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FWThinking01 Fw:Thinking on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108500616... Setting Sail for Alpha Centauri: https://www.youtube.com/user/fwthinking

No one's sure what fast radio bursts are, so some Harvard scientists asked: Why not aliens? Learn more about this story at www.newsy.com/67725/ Find more videos like this at www.newsy.com Follow Newsy on Facebook: www.facebook.com/newsyvideos Follow Newsy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/newsyvideos

The feasibility of a gigantic radio transmitter beaming Fast Radio Burst (FRB) signals across the cosmos has been studied. Could these signals be propelling Alien spacecraft? - Read the full story: https://goo.gl/9sxj9b Credit: Space.com / Produced and Edited by @SteveSpaleta http://www.twitter.com/stevespaleta

We are all familiar with weather on Earth, but how much do you know about weather in space? Suitable for all ages, this introduction to space weather covers vocabulary like coronal mass ejection (CME), solar wind, and solar flare. It also outlines potential effects of solar storms on our planet. Learn more about planet Earth at http://www.spacetv.net/earth/ Learn more about the Sun at http://www.spacetv.net/the-sun/ Learn more about Stars at http://www.spacetv.net/stars/ Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Reaching another galaxy might not be as far away as you might think! Recently Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking developed a plan of reaching Alpha Centauri by means of solar sail. Even Mark Zuckerberg is on board! Today Sergei and Anya share with you details on project Breakthrough Starshot. Check out more hilarious science talks: http://goo.gl/HQNO6f Book recommendation: #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso (https://goo.gl/ztbGVI) Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thathotphysicsguy Instagram: @arturmoczulski Twitter: @PhysicsHot Host: Sergei Dyda Guest: Anya Video production: Artur Moczulski @ RazorDigital All the graphics content is licensed under Creative Commons licence. Music: Jens East - Memories (ft. Lotta Rasva) (http://www.jenseast.com/)

TVIW 2016, Chattanooga, TN, 2/28/16 - 3/1/16, Plenary talk by Dr. Greg Matloff, City University of New York.

TVIW 2016, Chattanooga, TN, 2/28/16 - 3/1/16, Plenary talk by Rex Ridenoure, CEO, Ecliptic Enterprises.

It took the Voyager 1 spacecraft over three decades to leave the solar system (and scientists still aren’t sure when it did). We need a new method of propulsion that will transport spacecraft faster than ever before. NASA is one of a few agencies developing a new way to sail through space, on the power of the solar wind. Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TWITTER: https://twitter.com/techinsider INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/tech_insider/ TUMBLR: http://techinsider.tumblr.com/

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled a huge prototype solar sail for its asteroid probe during a public event in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. Read more: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/21/national/science-health/huge-sail-will-power-jaxa-mission-trojan-asteroids-back/ SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL: http://goo.gl/mExQt7 VISIT OUR WEBSITE: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ LIKE US ON FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thejapantimes FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/japantimes LEARN ABOUT JAPAN TIMES DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: http://members.japantimes.co.jp/sub/

2016年7月13日に、相模原市立総合体育館で行われた JAXA　宇宙研による、ソーラー電力セイル探査機の　試作セイルの展開試験の生中継アーカイブです。

2016年7月13日に、相模原市立総合体育館で行われた JAXA　宇宙研による、ソーラー電力セイル探査機の　試作セイルの展開試験の早送りです。

I mess about in games, or record spacial activities. My Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Balto1925?ref=hl

It’s going to be almost impossible to travel to another star, but a new idea was announced that might get us to a nearby star within our lifetime. How will it work? Support us at: http://www.patreon.com/universetoday More stories at: http://www.universetoday.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Follow us on Tumblr: http://universetoday.tumblr.com/ Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/universetoday Google+ - https://plus.google.com/+universetoday/ Instagram - http://instagram.com/universetoday Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain Jason Harmer - @jasoncharmer Chad Weber - [email protected] Created by: Fraser Cain and Jason Harmer Edited by: Chad Weber Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcoZNrSveE In a previous episode, I said that traveling within the Solar System is hard enough, traveling to another star system in our lifetime is downright impossible. Many of you said it was the most depressing episode I’ve ever done . The distance to Pluto is, on average, about 40 astronomical units. That’s 40 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. And New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft traveling in the Solar System took about 10 years to make the journey. The distance to Alpha Centauri is about 277,000 astronomical units away (or 4.4 light-years). That’s about 7,000 times further than Pluto. New Horizons could make the journey, if you were willing to wait about 70,000 years. That’s about twice as long as you’d be willing to wait for Half Life 3. But my video clearly made an impact on a plucky team of rocket scientists, entrepreneurs and physicists, who have no room in their personal dictionary for the word “impossible”. Challenge accepted, they said to themselves. In early April, 2016, just 8 months after I said it was probably never going to happen, the billionaire Yuri Milner and famed physicist Stephen Hawking announced a strategy to send a spacecraft to another star within our lifetime. In your face Fraser, they said... in your face. The project will be called Breakthrough Starshot, and it’s led by Pete Worden, the former director of NASA’s AMES Research Center - the people working on a warp drive. The team announced that they’re spending $100 million to investigate the technology it’ll take to send a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, making the trip in just 20 years. And by doing so, they might just revolutionize the way spacecraft travel around our own Solar System. So, what’s the plan? According to their announcement, the team is planning to create teeny tiny lightsail spacecraft, and accelerate them to 20% the speed of light using lasers. Yes, everything’s made better with lasers . We’ve talked about solar sails in the past, but the gist is that photons of light can impart momentum when they bounce off something. It’s not very much, but if you add a tremendous amount of photons, the impact can be significant. And because those photons are going the speed of light, the maximum speed for the spacecraft, in theory, is just shy of the speed of light (thanks relativity). You can get those photons from the Sun, but you can also get them from a directed laser beam, designed to fill the sails with photons, without actually melting the spacecraft. In the past, engineers have talked about solar sails that might be thousands of kilometers across, made of gossamer sheets of reflective fabric. Got that massive, complicated sail in your mind? Now think smaller. The Starshot spacecraft will measure just a few meters across, with a thickness of just a few atoms. The sail would then pull a microscopic payload of instruments. A tiny chip, capable of gathering data and transmitting information - these are called Starchips. Not even enough room for water bear crew quarters. With such a low mass, a powerful laser should be able to accelerate them to 20% the speed of light, almost instantly, making a trip to Alpha Centauri only take about 20 years. Since each Starshot might only cost a few dollars to make, the company could manufacture thousands and thousands, place them into orbit, and then start bugzapping them off to different stars. There are, of course, some massive engineering hurdles to overcome. The first is the density of the interstellar medium. Although it’s almost completely empty in between the stars, there are the occasional dust particles. Normally harmless, the Starshots would be smashing into them at 20% the speed of light, which would be catastrophic. The second problem is that this is a one-way trip. Once it’s going 20% the speed of light, there’s no way to slow the spacecraft down again (unless the Alpha Centaurans have a braking system in place). Just imagine the motion blur and targeting problems when you’re trying to take photos at relativistic speeds.

Breakthrough Starshot is here. Personal website: http://nikhilreddy.io Twitter: http://twitter.com/bignikhilreddy

It's been a busy two months of testing for The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft. Engineers spun the CubeSat like a record and shined flashlights in its electronic eyes in order to make sure everything goes according to plan when the solar sail heads into space. LightSail will soon be transported to Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory, where it will be flooded with magnetic fields in order to calibrate the spacecraft's attitude control system. This short video showcases tests of the spacecraft's momentum wheel, gyroscopes, deployment motor and sun sensors. Footage by Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation Music: "Turtles all the way down" by General Fuzz

We can get to Mars in 3 days, . . .sort of, maybe. In this episode of SciShow Space Reid Reimers explains the possibilities of photonic propulsion in use with space travel. Hosted by: Reid Reimers ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow ---------- Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters -- we couldn't make SciShow without them! Shout out to Justin Ove, Fatima Iqbal, Linnea Boyev, Kathy & Tim Philip, Kevin Bealer, Justin Lentz, Chris Peters, and Philippe von Bergen. ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/scishow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow ---------- Sources: Videos http://livestream.com/viewnow/niac2015seattle/videos/105034354 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCDuAiA6kX0 Websites http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015525/roadmap-stars http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-are-investigating-a-propulsion-system-that-could-reach-mars-in-3-days http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/directed-energy-interstellar-precursors http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/directed-energy-planetary-defense Papers http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-Roadmap-to-Interstellar-Flight-15-d.pdf http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DE-STAR-JBIS-v13.pdf

The Planetary Society introduces LightSail 2, a solar sailing CubeSat that uses the pressure of sunlight for propulsion. LightSail 2 is the successor to LightSail 1, which completed a successful test flight last year. The new spacecraft will launch with Georgia Tech's Prox-1 satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. This video showcases recent LightSail 2 sail deployment tests at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. For more on the LightSail program, visit sail.planetary.org. Music by General Fuzz http://www.generalfuzz.net

Solar sail Solar sails (also called light sails or photon sails) are a form of spacecraft propulsion using the radiation pressure (also called solar pressure) from stars to push large ultra-thin mirrors to high speeds.Light sails could also be driven by energy beams to extend their range of operations, which is strictly beam sailing rather than solar sailing. =======Image-Copyright-Info======== License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0) LicenseLink: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 Author-Info: Andrzej Mirecki Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg =======Image-Copyright-Info======== -Video is targeted to blind users Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA image source in video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-InnipTxgs

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace: ‪http://www.squarespace.com/physicsgirl What if you could power a ship using sunlight instead of wind? Well in space, you can! Solar sails or light sails are pushed with light from the sun. Photons provide a kick when they reflect off the sail pushing the sail like an air molecule in the wind pushes a sailboat. Find out how a solar sail works and about the future of this technology! ‪http://physicsgirl.org/ ‪http://twitter.com/thephysisgirl ‪http://facebook.com/thephysicsgirl ‪http://instagram.com/thephysicsgirl Help us translate our videos! http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?c=UC7DdEm33SyaTDtWYGO2CwdA&tab=2 Host/editor: Dianna Cowern Writer: Sophia Chen Editor: Jabril Ashe - sefdstuff.com/science Animator: Kyle Norby Photos/Videos: NASA LightSail - Planetary Society Pixabay.com Shutterstock.com FASTSAT NanoSail-D Launch - NASA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gS4n5vz9Tw Optical Tweezes Footage - Dr Luis Grave De Petralta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ybb9rKfus IKAROS drawing - Andrzej MIrecki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKAROS#/media/File:IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg Music: APM and YouTube

Check out the new Patreon page and help the channel grow: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2318196&ty=h In this Kerbal Space Program video we are going to explore a solar sail mission that was supposed to be lauched from Delta III SSBN in the middle of the Barents Sea and enter Low Earth Orbit, testing the solar sails in space back in 2005. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned as the satellite never separated from its launch rocket, but this would have been the first solar sail test in the world. Thank you for watching and please SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed the video. More about Cosmos-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_1 More about Lightsail-1: http://sail.planetary.org/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/WhatDaMath Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatdamath Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/whatdamath

In this time lapse, the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout) CubeSat team rolls a half-scale prototype of the small satellite's solar sail in preparation for a deployment test. During its mission, NEA Scout will perform an approximate two-year cruise propelled by the solar sail to a target asteroid. A camera on the CubeSat will capture a series of low (50 cm/pixels) and high resolution (10 cm/pixels) images to determine global shape, spin rate, pole position, regional morphology, regolith properties, spectral class, and for local environment characterization.

When scientists are planning missions, they sometimes have to take into account the fact that the light from the Sun pushes on the spacecraft. But with solar sails, they can also use that pressure to propel the craft along. ---------- Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters -- we couldn't make SciShow without them! Shout out to Justin Ove, Justin Lentz, David Campos, Philippe von Bergen, Chris Peters, Lilly Grainger, Happy Birthday!!, and Fatima Iqbal. ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/SciShow Or help support us by becoming our patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow Sources: http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/evolution/AAS_08-051.pdf http://time.com/3643896/kepler-planets-repair/ http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/lightsail-update-launch.html http://sail.planetary.org/ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/neascout.php http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/jul2014/presentations/0930_Thu_Castillo_NEAScout.pdf

More space news and info at: http://www.coconutsciencelab.com - using electrostatic repulsion of the solar wind, this spacecraft can outperform both solar ion, and solar sail deep space probes. Please rate and comment, thanks!

SHOTLIST 1. Wide shot pan of the space mission control room 2. Close up of screen 3. Space mission official watching computer monitor 4. Animation of satellite launch 5. Close up zoom in from expert to the scene of the satellite launch 6. Mid shot of mission control executives watching monitor 7. Pan from launch headquarters to executives 8. Close up experts watching computer wall screen 9. Wide shot pan of launch headquarters officers 10. Close up of woman. 11. Close up of male expert 12. Set up shot of Louis Friedman 13. Cutaway of PC monitor screen 14. SOUNDBITE (English) Louis Friedman, executive director of The US Planetary Society "If it did fail that would certainly be embarrassing because we had a failure before related to the launch vehicle. But I don't want to hypothesise yet on what it means because I don't know yet what really happened". 15. Mid shot of experts at the computer monitor 16. Wide shot of experts STORYLINE A Russian attempt to launch a solar sail vehicle designed to be propelled by pressure from sunlight has failed again because the booster rocket suffered engine failure soon after it blasted into space, the state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. The launch was part of a joint Russian-U.S project attempting the first controlled flight of a solar sail. An unnamed official in Russia's Northern Fleet told the news agency early Wednesday that the engine failure occurred 83 seconds after the launch from a submerged Russian submarine in the northern Barents Sea at 1946 GMT on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Lavochkin institute involved in the project, told The Associated Press she could not confirm the information but said that if the engine had failed then the vehicle would have fallen back to Earth. Past attempts to unfold similar devices in space have failed. In 1999, Russia attempted a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere. In 2001, Russia launched another such experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster. The project involved Russia's Lavochkin research production institute and was financed by an organisation affiliated to the U.S. Planetary Society. During the first 45 minutes after launch, in two stages the solar sail was to have separated from the booster and then an engine still powering the device. But space officials lost all signals from the spacecraft. The spacecraft, called "Solar Sail", weighs about 110 kilograms (242 pounds) and is designed to go into an orbit more than 800 kilometres (500 miles) high. It is designed to be powered by eight 49.5-foot-long (15.1-meter-long) sail structures resembling the blades of a windmill. Each blade can be turned to reflect sunlight in different directions so that the craft can tack, much like a sailboat in the wind. The aim is for streams of solar energy particles to push a giant, reflecting sail through space the way wind propels sailboats across water. Solar sails are envisioned as a potential means for achieving interstellar flight in the future, allowing such spacecraft to gradually build up great velocity and cover large distances. Space-sail technology is something that existed solely in science-fiction novels a decade ago. Yet the reflective solar sail could power missions to the sun and beyond within a decade and NASA has invested about US$30 million in this field. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/e4c54fd3b2cce8b76fd5320e1a5ba44e Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

NASA recently announced further funding for a huge new solar sail spacecraft that could travel quickly across the solar system and beyond. Called HERTS, or Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System, the sail would launch on Earth as a relatively compact spacecraft, but once it reached a safe distance from earth, it would unfold its Mylar sails across wires extending a whopping 12 miles from the spacecraft's center! The sails would use photonic pressure from the Sun's solar wind for thrust. It is similar in many ways to the smaller LightSail launched recently by Bill Nye, based off designs by Carl Sagan. Read the full story at PopSci: http://www.popsci.com/nasas-plan-sail-past-out-our-solar-system Credit: Bruce. M Wiegmann NASA MSEC Advanced Concepts Office

Share on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1GqkB3h One of the biggest challenges facing space exploration is propulsion. Our main go-to, rocket fuel, is heavy, expensive, and can easily run out during travel. Fortunately, the solution might come in the form of solar sails. The Planetary Society has already tested the solar sail deployment mechanism designed for Lightsail. The next step? Building a deep-space vehicle that uses solar sails as the primary means of propulsion. What sort of citizen-based science project would you most be interested in getting involved in? Let us know in the comments below! -------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe to Fw:Thinking: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=fwthinking For the audio podcast, blog and more, visit the Fw:Thinking website: http://www.fwthinking.com Fw:Thinking on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fwthinking Jonathan Stickland on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jonstrickland Fw:Thinking on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FWThinking01 Fw:Thinking on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108500616405453822675/

May 28 -- Humans could be racing across the solar system in spacecraft with sails one day. The non-profit Planetary Society launched Lightsail this May, the latest in a series of tests by the U.S. and Japan since 2010. Bloomberg's Ramy Inocencio explains how solar sails work and how fast we could boldly go. -- Subscribe to Bloomberg on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg Bloomberg Television offers extensive coverage and analysis of international business news and stories of global importance. It is available in more than 310 million households worldwide and reaches the most affluent and influential viewers in terms of household income, asset value and education levels. With production hubs in London, New York and Hong Kong, the network provides 24-hour continuous coverage of the people, companies and ideas that move the markets.

Today (May 20, 2015) at 17:45 MSK. Bp. from Cape Canaveral will be launched rocket "Atlas V" with a lot of satellites, one of which would be unusual "LightSail A". This spacecraft uses an unusual way to travel in space, based on the action of the solar wind pressure. It is best suited for this purpose the mirror surface, so the solar sail could be bright for observers on Earth. Area solar sail "LightSail A" is 32 square meters. m, i.e. it will be a square with sides of about 6 meters - material "Mylar". Weight spacecraft of 5 kg.

STORY: Can a sail as wide as a decent sized studio apartment but only a fraction as thick as a strand of hair be deployed from a box smaller than a loaf of bread? The answer is yes. Can it be done Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/reuterssubscribe More updates and innovations news: http://smarturl.it/Innovations Reuters tells the world's stories like no one else. As the largest international multimedia news provider, Reuters provides coverage around the globe and across topics including business, financial, national, and international news. For over 160 years, Reuters has maintained its reputation for speed, accuracy, and impact while providing exclusives, incisive commentary and forward-looking analysis. http://reuters.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Reuters https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/reuters https://twitter.com/Reuters

In 1976, Carl Sagan appeared on The Tonight Show to talk about a crazy new idea: solar sailing. Nearly 40 years later, The Planetary Society is realizing this dream with a new spacecraft called LightSail designed to propel through space on beams of sunlight. http://sail.planetary.org Carson Footage Supplied Courtesy of Carson Entertainment Group Music by General Fuzz

The first of The Planetary Society's two LightSail spacecraft will ride to space aboard an Atlas V rocket in May 2015. The mission is a shakedown cruise designed to test out the CubeSat's critical systems. In 2016, the second LightSail spacecraft will piggyback into orbit aboard the first operational flight of SpaceX's new Falcon Heavy rocket for a full-fledged solar sailing demonstration. For more information, visit sail.planetary.org.

HELIOS is an advanced solar sail concept being evaluated by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). NASA's STMD rapidly develops, demonstrates, and infuses revolutionary, high-payoff technologies through transparent, collaborative partnerships, expanding the boundaries of the aerospace enterprise. http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech ____ From the video: NASA is designing a next-generation solar sail: HELIOS, or High-Performance Enabling Low-Cost Innovative Operational Heliogyro Solarsail. HELIOS will demonstrate a type of high performance solar sail called a heliogyro. The "sail" of the heliogyro consists of very long reflective membrane strips, or blades. Blades are rolled onto reels to simplify packaging and deployment. Sunlight reflecting on the blades creates thrust. No on-board fuel is required. HELIOS requires no additional structure to maintain its shape. This reduces weight and permits higher accelerations and shorter travel times to distant destinations. HELIOS also steers like a helicopter. Tilting each blade redirects the reflected sunlight and solar pressure. This can be used to change thrust, orientation relative to the Sun or spin rate. Cameras will capture the motion of the blades, sending proof of deployment to Earth, recording video to compare with computer models and communicating blade motion to the blade control system. Future HELIOS solar sail missions: Solar weather early warning Imaging the poles of the Sun Travel beyond the Solar System

LightSail's solar sails deploy during spacecraft testing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Sept. 23. For testing purposes, the sail booms were only extended to 90 percent of their full length. They were then incrementally extended so engineers could measure sail tension and record the correct number of deployment motor revolutions. Read more about this test at: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/20140924-lightsail-sails-ditl.html

Technology Demonstration Missions; taking the next step in deep space navigation, spacecraft propulsion and deceleration. Can a giant inner tube slow spacecraft for safe atmospheric entry? Will solar sails propel satellites through space?

I'm Fraser Cain, and I'm a sailor. Well, okay, I've got a sailboat that I take out on the water when its warm and the weather's nice here on Vancouver Island. I think it's one of the reasons I absolutely love the idea of a solar sail. Here's how they work: Light is made up of photons. Even though they have no mass at rest, they have momentum when they're moving, well, light speed. When they reflect off a surface, like a mirror or a shiny piece of metal, they impart some of this momentum to that surface. This effect is negligible here on Earth, but out in space, with forces perfectly in balance, that additional momentum can really add up. A spacecraft flying to Mars gets pushed off course by several thousand kilometers because of light pressure from the Sun.If mission planners didn't compensate for this drift, their spacecraft would miss the planet, or even worse, crash into it. Even though the total amount of pressure per square meter on a solar sail is minuscule, it's constantly streaming from the Sun, and it's totally free....And propulsion that you don't have to carry with you is the best kind there is. This is more than just an idea. Solar sails have already been launched and deployed in space. The Japanese Ikaros satellite unfurled a 14-meter solar sail back in 2010. NASA launched its own Nanosail-D spacecraft in 2011. An even bigger solar sail, the Sunjammer, is planned for launch in 2014. The Planetary Society is working on a solar sail project as well. The closer to the Sun you are, the better they work. In fact, a solar sail would be an ideal vehicle to explore the regions of Mercury and Venus, since they receive so much radiation. But you're probably wondering how a solar sail could get down to those planets because light is streaming from the Sun in all directions. It's all about raising and lowering your orbit. If you want to raise your orbit around an object, all you have to do is speed up. And if you want to lower your orbit, you just need to slow down. A solar sail launched from Earth would start out with the same orbital velocity around the Sun as the Earth. To get into a higher orbit, it tilts the sail so that the light from the Sun speeds it up. And to get into a lower orbit, it tilts in the opposite direction, and the light from the Sun acts like a brake. A solar sail might even be the ideal spacecraft to make the journey to another star. An interstellar solar sail could lower its orbit so that it's just above the surface of the Sun. Then, it would unfurl the full sail and capture the most possible photons. A series of powerful laser beams would then target the sail and increase its velocity to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Of course, you'd need a solar sail thousands of kilometers across, made of a material thinner than a human hair, and lasers putting out more energy than all of humanity. The idea is still intriguing, even though it's well outside our current technology. Once this technology gets better tested, we'll to see many more missions employ solar sails as part of their propulsion system.

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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aresinstituteinc/lunarsail-the-worlds-first-crowdsourced-solar-sail/ The primary objective of the LunarSail mission is to serve as a testbed for cubesat and solar sail operations beyond low Earth orbit and applications requiring cislunar or interplanetary rendezvous. It is a proposed cubesat mission intended to demonstrate practical application of solar sail technology for propulsion, trajectory/attitude control and rendezvous with another body in space. With LunarSail, we will take advantage of the cubesat platform to conduct a first of its kind mission to use a solar sail to send a spacecraft to the Moon and then utilize the sail's unique characteristics to navigate into lunar orbit. LunarSail is a different kind of space exploration mission. It is not a government project and while remaining open to - and in fact seeking - government-provided funding and assistance in finding a suitable launch opportunity, a substantial amount of our budget is being fulfilled via crowdfunding and private donations. Through crowdfunding, private citizens are able to donate any amount, and not just money but also labor, programming and ideas -becoming co-owners of the mission, stakeholders in its success. We are inviting creative people and the public to submit messages, artwork, music and short video clips that will be stored onboard the spacecraft in a reserved area of computer memory storage. By doing this, artists will be able to send their works into space and to the Moon and everyone will be able to send their messages into space. We plan to integrate social media outreach into the mission, in particular once the spacecraft is in space. In addition to radio, cameras and telemetry, we will use social media as another means of communicating to and from the spacecraft. We will integrate social media into the software and communications architecture and utilize it to facilitate interaction with the public.

NASA's NanoSail-D2 CubeSat Solar Sail Testing