The New Zealand Herald reports, “NASA has launched its new solar sail mission from Mahia Peninsula. Once at a Sun-synchronous orbit, about 1000 km above Earth, the spacecraft will deploy its sails and use the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, instead of rocket fuel. If the microwave oven-sized CubeSat is successfully deployed, the operation would be a precursor to larger-scale missions to the Moon and Mars, NASA said.”
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Tag: solar sail
NASA’s Artemis I Mission to Include Small Solar Sailing Spacecraft
ExecutiveGov reports that NASA “will send its small spacecraft with solar sail propulsion to space as part of the Artemis I human exploration mission.” Artemis I mission principal technology investigator Les Johnson “said in a statement published Wednesday the flight of the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout payload is partly meant to demonstrate the use of solar sailing spacecraft to reach new places and conduct science experiments.” The cubesat’s “aluminum-coated plastic film sail is designed to reflect sunlight and generate thrust to enable the spacecraft to accelerate and navigate through space for asteroid data-gathering efforts.”
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Ball Aerospace Selected by NASA to Support Solar Cruiser
ExecutiveGov reports that Ball Aerospace “has been selected to support a NASA small satellite technology demonstration, Solar Cruiser, the company reported on Wednesday.” The company “will perform several mission-critical functions, including the integration and test of the satellite bus with the solar sail system that will form the completed Sailcraft.” Ball Aerospace’s “efforts will inform on the use of solar photons for propulsion in space.” The Solar Cruiser “will be one of four missions launching with the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), currently scheduled in 2025.”
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