Cosmos 1, a $4 million experiment intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight, lifted off at 12:46 p.m. PDT as organizers of the private project monitored the launch from ...

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. Space ...

NASA has launched the latest attempt to test solar sail propulsion technology. The ACS3’s solar sail is made of a reflective polymer and is held by a boom made of carbon fiber composite material.

In the frozen outskirts of the solar system, a reddish dwarf planet orbits in silence. Known as Sedna, it is so distant that one trip around the Sun takes more than 11,000 years. For much of that time ...

A Cornell student's light sail, which weighs only 0.2 pounds, was released from the International Space Station by astronauts ...

On May 21, 2010, Japan launched the first solar sail into space. Solar sail technology uses light for spacecraft propulsion, but not in the same way that traditional solar panels do. While solar ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti, University of Michigan (THE CONVERSATION) The burgeoning space ...

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. Subscribe to our ...