Countdown to the First Solar Spacecraft: No Engines, and Why You Should Care

Forget the long tail, the Solar Space Craft has 8 triangular sails and covers the cosmos with no engines.

Why you should care: This technology enables the spacecraft to keep accelerating over almost unlimited distances, and is the only technology now in existence that might one day take us to the stars. Read on:

“Feel like being part of an ambitious scientific adventure? Spend a few minutes at the Planetary Society web site watching the lead up to the launch on June 21 of the first solar sail spacecraft, Cosmos 1. Solar sails power a spacecraft by the pressure of light particles from the Sun –there is no engine.

“It’s not government funded but sponsored by Cosmos Studios, and supported by Members of The Planetary Society from all over the world. The spacecraft will be launched from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea and carried into orbit in a converted ICBM left over from the old Soviet arsenal.” More….