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:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troye town,
And how the boistous winds did beat
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Till Agamemnon’s daughter’s blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)