NASA Unfurls Largest Solar Cruiser Sail Quadrant Ever Deployed

NASA and industry partners used two 100-foot lightweight composite booms to stretch out a 4,300-square-foot (400-square-meter) prototype solar sail quadrant for the first time in Building 4316 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on Oct. 13. Solar sails use the force of light – not rocket fuel – to fly in deep space. They get a gentle, constant push from sunlight particles, or photons, hitting their giant reflective surfaces. The fully deployed sail the covers an area larger than the surface of a tennis court with an aluminum-coated plastic material that’s thinner than a human hair. The full-scale prototype is only a quarter of the sail designed to fly the Solar Cruiser spacecraft towards the Sun and demonstrate orbits that would be difficult or impossible for conventional satellites to maintain.

[minerharry]

R.I.P. NEA Scout, devastating to hear of its failure post-launch. I hope the team can recover and make test more cool solar sail stuff in the future!

[abrahamsatinger]

From MIT: a highly acclaimed educational institute produced a roll to roll graphene on copper substrate process!!! There's your graphene and energy production that you smart intelligent scholars can cut and paste together your solar sails!! A roll to roll to solar sails from MIT!

[richfrazier]

What about space debris hitting the sail?

[chrissantoaji]

Better change the spacecraft of voyager with this spacecraft. This spacecraft can make the old man may happier.

[knowledgelover]

What is stopping us from sending one to proxima B?

[planetsec]

Imagine my shock when I find out its cancelled.

[davidcatanach]

Could they be used to block some sunlight to help cool the Earth?

[ntwndrboy]

Unless your rockets can clean up their exhaust that you shoot out into space from the ground all the way through our entire atmosphere where I don't drive my car then you're doing way more damage than I am