Solar Sails
Solar sails, a proposed method of spacecraft propulsion, would use radiation pressure from the Sun as a motive force. Private spacecraft Cosmos 1 was to have used this form of propulsion. The idea was proposed as early as 1924 by Soviet scientist Friedrich Zander.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has successfully unfurled a solar sail in space which has already succeeded in propelling its payload with the IKAROS project.
Read more about this topic: Radiation Pressure
Famous quotes containing the words solar and/or sails:
“Senta: These boats, sir, what are they for?
Hamar: They are solar boats for Pharaoh to use after his death. They’re the means by which Pharaoh will journey across the skies with the sun, with the god Horus. Each day they will sail from east to west, and each night Pharaoh will return to the east by the river which runs underneath the earth.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Fair stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)