A NASA-funded project is developing new technologies that would allow a spacecraft to fly through the cosmos propelled entirely with solar sails that "bend" light. The agency announced Tuesday that it ...

Solar sails represent one of the most elegant concepts in space exploration: using sunlight itself to propel spacecraft through the cosmos without any fuel. But these thin, light giants face a ...

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 ...

Turns out, it's as tough to drop inward into the inner solar system, as it is to head outward. The problem stems from losing momentum from a launch starting point on Earth. It can take missions ...

Recent successes in the deployment of sails in space have reduced the risk associated with solar sailing missions. The attitude control requirements for a solar sailing mission is low with only slow ...

A Purdue University professor is leading an effort to send a CubeSat up for an attempted controlled solar sailing in Earth’s orbit. The CubeSat, LightSail 2, is one payload as part of the Air Force’s ...

THE next generation of spacecraft propulsion systems could be dead in the water before they are even launched. A physicist is claiming that solar sailing- the idea of using sunlight to blow spacecraft ...