https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Solar sails have some major advantages over traditional propulsion methods—most notably, they don't use any propellant. But, how exactly do they turn? In traditional sailing, a ship's captain can simply adjust the angle of the sail itself to catch the wind at a different angle. But they also have the added advantage of a rudder, which doesn't work when sailing on light. This has been a long-standing challenge, but a new paper available on the arXiv preprint server by Gulzhan Aldan and Igor Bargatin at the University of Pennsylvania describes a new technique to turn solar sails—kirigami. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-failure-propulsion.html Space Exploration Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:40:01 EST news686226172 The burgeoning space industry and the technologies society increasingly relies on—electric grids, aviation and telecommunications—are all vulnerable to the same threat: space weather. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-spacecraft-equipped-solar-earlier-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:33:24 EDT news671711597 Getting a mission to the point of officially being accepted for launch is an ordeal. However, even when they aren't selected for implementation, their ideas, and in some cases, their technologies, can live on in other missions. That was the case for the Oversize Kite-craft for Exploration and AstroNautics in the Outer Solar system (OKEANOS) project, originally planned as a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-okeanos-mission-samples-trojan-asteroids.html Space Exploration Tue, 26 Nov 2024 15:42:03 EST news651858121 Now that its reflective sail has deployed fully open in orbit, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System can be seen in the night sky from many locations across the world! https://phys.org/news/2024-09-diamond-sky-nasa-solar-demo.html Space Exploration Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:35:53 EDT news645107749 Solar sails are an exciting way to travel through the solar system because they get their propulsion from the sun. NASA has developed several solar sails, and their newest, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (or ACS3), launched a few months ago into low Earth orbit. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-nasa-solar-booms.html Space Exploration Fri, 30 Aug 2024 12:18:18 EDT news644239092 Solar sails rely upon pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. Get the sail closer to the sun and, not surprisingly, efficiency increases. A proposed new mission called Mercury Scout aims to take advantage of this to explore Mercury. The mission will map the Mercurian surface down to a resolution of 1 meter and, using the highly reflective sail surface to illuminate shadowed craters, could hunt for water deposits. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-mercury-destination-solar.html Space Exploration Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:36:03 EDT news630855361 Space travel has brought us to our next-door neighbor, the moon, and to the depths of our larger solar community inhabited by giants such as Saturn and Jupiter. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-solar-interplanetary.html Space Exploration Mon, 17 Apr 2023 16:50:01 EDT news600968462 Can we build an enormous umbrella to dim the sun? Such a feat would be a megaproject on a scale like no other. It would take at least 400 dedicated rocket launches a year, for ten years (There have been 172 rocket launches by all nations so far in 2022). The project would weigh in at 550,000 tons: at its lightest. And it would be an ecological experiment that puts us all—the entire planet—in the petri dish, with high risk and high reward. But could such a project actually reverse climate change and bring us back from the brink of global disaster? https://phys.org/news/2022-12-climate-block-sun-lightweight-solar.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:35:04 EST news590074501 Solar sailing seems like a simple concept—instead of being pushed along by the wind, as in a typical sailing ship, a spacecraft can use highly reflective said to be pushed along simply by sunlight. But as with almost all engineering challenges, that technique is much easier said than done. Sunlight can head up one side of a sail more than another, causing the ship to rotate unexpectedly. Other unforeseen situations could arise that can also have catastrophic consequences for any mission using this propulsion technology. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-solar-stable.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Nov 2022 12:08:10 EDT news586782487 As NASA's exploration continues to push boundaries, a new solar sail concept selected by the agency for development toward a demonstration mission could carry science to new destinations. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-nasa-supported-solar-science-heights.html Space Exploration Wed, 25 May 2022 09:03:03 EDT news572688181 Launching with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, NASA's shoebox-size Near-Earth Asteroid Scout will chase down what will become the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft. It will get there by unfurling a solar sail to harness solar radiation for propulsion, making this the agency's first deep space mission of its kind. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nasa-solar-mission-tiny-asteroid.html Astronomy Thu, 20 Jan 2022 16:27:45 EST news561918460 Even after 30 months in space, The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 mission continues to successfully "sail on sunbeams," demonstrating solar sail technology in Earth orbit. The mission is providing hard data for future missions that hope to employ solar sails to explore the cosmos. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-lightsail-months-paving-future-solar.html Space Exploration Fri, 19 Nov 2021 10:20:01 EST news556536465 Thin metallic tethers for Coulomb drag devices that tow satellites and spacecraft can now be produced more easily than before. Scientists of the Finnish Meteorological Institute have developed a method to produce multi-wire tether by twisting hair-thin metal wires. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-inexpensive-method-e-sail-tethers.html Space Exploration Wed, 25 Mar 2020 08:52:07 EDT news504345127 When it comes to the challenges posed by interstellar travel, there are no easy answers. The distances are immense, the amount of energy needed to make the journey is tremendous, and the time scales involved are (no pun!) astronomical. But what if there was a way to travel between stars using ships that take advantage of natural phenomena to reach relativistic velocities (a fraction of the speed of light)? https://phys.org/news/2020-03-supernova-interstellar.html Astronomy Mon, 02 Mar 2020 09:18:45 EST news502363119 Mission accomplished: the Planetary Society announced Wednesday that its LightSail 2 spacecraft, which was launched last month, had successfully raised its orbit using only the power of photons from the Sun. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-flight-mission-lightsail.html Space Exploration Thu, 01 Aug 2019 06:28:55 EDT news483859728 Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They've all led up to now. The Planetary Society's crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-lightsail-spacecraft-successfully-flight.html Space Exploration Thu, 01 Aug 2019 02:45:43 EDT news483846319 Photos transmitted from The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft orbiting Earth confirm that it successfully deployed its solar sail. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-images-lightsail-spacecraft-solar-deployed.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jul 2019 11:48:26 EDT news483360498 A few days from now, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will lift off from Florida, carrying a satellite the size of a loaf of bread with nothing to power it but a huge polyester "solar sail." https://phys.org/news/2019-06-stars-photons-revolutionize-space-flight.html Space Exploration Thu, 20 Jun 2019 02:03:50 EDT news480215023 The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft is ready to embark on a challenging mission to demonstrate the power of sunlight for propulsion. https://phys.org/news/2019-05-lightsail-month-aboard-spacex-falcon.html Space Exploration Tue, 14 May 2019 10:00:13 EDT news477046792 Spacecraft outfitted with sails and propelled by the sun are no longer the stuff of science fiction or theoretical space missions. Now, a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher is taking solar sailing to the next level with advanced photonic materials. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-solar-technology-nasa.html Space Exploration Mon, 16 Jul 2018 16:11:06 EDT news450976236 We're all familiar with the idea of solar sails to explore the solar system, using the light pressure from the sun. But there's another propulsion system that could harness the power of the sun, electric sails, and it's a pretty exciting idea. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-electric-exotic-explore-solar.html Space Exploration Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:10:03 EDT news428139360 NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, a small satellite the size of a shoebox, designed to study asteroids close to Earth, performed a full-scale solar sail deployment test at ManTech NeXolve's facility in Huntsville, Alabama, Sept. 13. The test was performed in an indoor clean room to ensure the deployment mechanism's functionality after recent environmental testing. https://phys.org/news/2017-09-nasa-near-earth-asteroid-cubesat-full.html Space Exploration Thu, 28 Sep 2017 06:50:38 EDT news425800229 Estonia plans to launch a CubeSat into space in early 2019 aiming to test advanced technologies, including a plasma brake for deorbiting satellites and electric sail propulsion. The mission, named ESTCube-2, will serve as a prototype of Estonia's future moon-orbiting spacecraft. https://phys.org/news/2017-04-estonian-cubesat-technologies-future-moon-orbiting.html Space Exploration Fri, 21 Apr 2017 06:08:57 EDT news411973729 A new kind of spacecraft that sails on sunlight has just been successfully deployed above Earth. The LightSail satellite yesterday overcame a series of glitches to unfurl its solar sails, a propulsion system that's entirely different to traditional rockets, thrusters or even solar panels. https://phys.org/news/2015-06-space-sunbeams-solar-satellite.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:20:02 EDT news353310334 The Planetary Society solar sail exploration called LightSail is looking good. The concept—a spacecraft designed to propel through space on beams of sunlight— pushed through by nothing but the pressure of sunlight—is making news this week with reports of a successful solar sail deployment. This is a test mission serving as a precursor to the 2016 mission. In measuring mission success, observers were looking to the deployment of LightSail's Mylar solar sails. https://phys.org/news/2015-06-lightsail-solar-good-latest-deployment.html Space Exploration Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:05:39 EDT news353095529 The concept of LightSail—spacecraft designed to propel through space on beams of sunlight— pushed through by nothing but the pressure of sunlight—has been around for years but this month made special news because the project to make it happen is becoming far riper for takeoff. Carl Sagan chatted about this idea of solar sailing on a 1976 talk show, and the idea moved into more significant phases and hard work. Since the talk show, Prof. Sagan founded the Planetary Society; Bill Nye joined, and said in a video that they are about to realize Prof. Sagan's vision. LightSail now has a 32-square-meter sails using extraordinarily thin mylar, said Nye, the Planetary Society's CEO. https://phys.org/news/2015-05-lightsail-team-mylar-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 11 May 2015 17:42:20 EDT news350584917 A tiny spacecraft designed to sail by the power of the sun is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX rocket in 2016, a leading US space enthusiast said Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2014-07-privately-funded-solar-spacecraft.html Space Exploration Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:35:50 EDT news324185736 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. https://phys.org/news/2014-01-solar.html Space Exploration Mon, 20 Jan 2014 09:44:18 EST news309433390 When satellites reach the end of their working lives, they may pose a threat to other spacecraft as they continue to orbit in a dormant state for many decades. But now a new way to deorbit ageing satellites in a safe manner is nearing its first test in space. https://phys.org/news/2013-12-satellites-safe.html Space Exploration Mon, 23 Dec 2013 07:30:52 EST news307006218 Remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife and the actor who played Scotty will get a final resting place in the "Final Frontier" under plans announced Thursday to launch a space archive. https://phys.org/news/2013-06-star-trek-creator-space-archive.html Space Exploration Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:17:52 EDT news290963865