3、Glinting in the sunlight as it circles planet Earth, the NanoSail-D solar sail will periodically be bright and easily visible to the eye.
6、The NanoSail-D may be followed over the next three years by another solar sail, this one built by the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space advocacy organization in Pasadena, Calif.
1、Right now, one key technological problem for solar-sail spacecraft lies in how to efficiently unroll solar sails in space.
5、Modern solar sail spacecraft designs, like NanoSail-D or the Japanese interplanetary spacecraft IKAROS, rely on the small but continuous pressure from sunlight itself for thrust.
2、The theoretical equation system of structural analysis on solar sail is given in this paper.
8、IT's the trailblazer of solar sailing.
4、The force on a solar sail is gentle, if not feeble, but unlike a rocket, which fires for a few minutes at most, it is constant.
7、Japan continues to have a program, and test solar sails have been deployed from satellites or rockets, but no one has ever gotten as far as trying to sail them anywhere.
