After a failure, a new craft to sail.Engineers have long envisioned replacing heavy rocket fuels with a solar sail that would use the steady push of sunlight against an ultrathin, highly reflective surface (SN: 8/21/99, p. 120). They're getting closer to propelling a spacecraft in this way. Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital suborbital /sub·or·bi·tal/ (sub-or´bi-t'l) infraorbital. sub·or·bit·al (s b-ôr b trajectory, the Planetary Society of Pasadena, Calif., announced plans last month to conduct a second test of a sail-propelled craft. Scheduled for launch early next year, the craft would evaluate for the first time both the deployment and operation of a solar sail in full orbit around Earth. The July mission was launched from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea Barents Council was founded in 1993 by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden to foster cooperation between countries in the region. The council has focused its efforts on improving infrastructure and cleaning up nuclear waste on Russia's Kola Peninsula., but the third stage of the launch rocket, a converted intercontinental ballistic missile intercontinental ballistic missile: see guided missile., did not separate. Therefore, the blades of the solar sail never inflated. The new craft, which is part of the privately funded Cosmos 1 project, also will be launched from the Barents Sea, says Louis J. Friedman, executive director of the society. The project aims to use the solar-powered sail to slowly expand the orbit of a spacecraft, moving it farther and farther from Earth. |
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