Space ship's solar sails set out for far shores of a new world
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
THE world’s first solar sail is due to be launched tomorrow from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, heralding a new era of space travel.
Cosmos 1 will be launched on a converted intercontinental ballistic missile and, once in orbit, will unfurl eight ultra-thin triangular sails, each about 14 metres (45ft) long, in a windmill formation.
The private US-Russian consortium that developed the craft said that photons, or light particles, bouncing off the reflective sails will propel it.
If successful, the mission will be as significant a milestone for space exploration as the invention of the fabric sail was for travel on Earth.
Solar sails could replace rockets on some spacecraft within a decade and, with a boost from a satellite-based laser, reach Pluto within two years and Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth, within 1,000.
Louis Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society, a private group which spearheaded the project, said: “The thing about solar sailing is that you don’t need to carry fuel. The real hope is that it becomes a way to travel between planets. And this is the only technology that leads in the long range to interstellar flight.”
The project also highlights the growing role played by the private sector in space exploration, once the exclusive preserve of government agencies.
Dr Friedman was in charge of developing solar sails for Nasa in the 1970s, and worked on a project to use the technology to intercept Halley’s Comet. But it was shelved because it was too expensive and deemed ahead of its time.
“Government agencies can afford it, but they get too ambitious, so projects become more expensive,” he said. “Then no one wants to take the risk.”
Dr Friedman left the agency and teamed up with Carl Sagan, a Nasa conslutant and popular astronomer, in 1979 to found the Planetary Society, the world’s largest non-profit, non-governmental space advocacy group.
The $4 million (£2.2 million) Cosmos 1 project was funded by Cosmos Studios, which was founded by Ann Druyan, Dr Sagan’s widow, and produces science-based films and DVDs. The spacecraft was built under contract by Russia’s Lavochkin Association and Space Re- search Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Data from the mission will be shared internationally, and if it succeeds, Nasa, the European Space Agency and others are expected to launch cosmic sails within a decade.
Solar sailing has been envisioned since the early 20th Century, but became possible only in the past ten years thanks to the development of super-lightweight materials.
Russian scientists were the first to suggest the idea. Fridrickh Arturovich Tsander, an engineer, wrote in 1924: “For flight in interplanetary space I am working on the idea of flying, using tremendous mirrors of very thin sheets, capable of achieving favourable results.”
Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, popularised the concept in his 1972 collection of short stories, The Wind From The Sun.
The technology has had its naysayers — notably Thomas Gold, the late British scientist who was Dr Friedman’s teacher at Cornell University. He argued that solar sails would not work because they would reflect all the light that hit them without absorbing any heat.
But Dr Friedman said that this argument was based on 19th-century theories of thermodynamics. “This is a test not of physics, but of engineering,” he said.
The spacecraft has been fitted into the nose of the Volna rocket and loaded on to the Delta III submarine, which is due to leave the northern port of Severmorsk, near Murmansk, today.
About 20 minutes after the three-stage Volna is fired from the submarine, Cosmos 1 should enter orbit at a distance of 512 miles. Its sails will be deployed 37 minutes later and, if they work correctly, they should be visible to the naked eye from the ground.
Cosmos 1 will then accelerate to 195mph in a day. As it gathers speed, it will move into a higher orbit.
It would reach 10,000mph in 100 days, according to its designers, but the sails are a mere 0.005mm thick and will quickly degrade, so it is likely to fall back to Earth as a fireball after a month.
That notwithstanding, the spacecraft will carry a CD with messages from its creators, including Ms Druyan, who is the head of Cosmos Studios.
Her message says: “Our ancestors devised a means to ride the winds across the high seas. They began the process of turning our species into an intercommunicating organism.
“The names of these ancient explorers are lost to us. Today we honour their courage and genius with this first flight of Cosmos 1. We seek to learn how to ride the light of our star across the immense ocean of space to the distant shores of other worlds.”
From Jeremy Page in Moscow
THE world’s first solar sail is due to be launched tomorrow from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, heralding a new era of space travel.
Cosmos 1 will be launched on a converted intercontinental ballistic missile and, once in orbit, will unfurl eight ultra-thin triangular sails, each about 14 metres (45ft) long, in a windmill formation.
The private US-Russian consortium that developed the craft said that photons, or light particles, bouncing off the reflective sails will propel it.
If successful, the mission will be as significant a milestone for space exploration as the invention of the fabric sail was for travel on Earth.
Solar sails could replace rockets on some spacecraft within a decade and, with a boost from a satellite-based laser, reach Pluto within two years and Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth, within 1,000.
Louis Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society, a private group which spearheaded the project, said: “The thing about solar sailing is that you don’t need to carry fuel. The real hope is that it becomes a way to travel between planets. And this is the only technology that leads in the long range to interstellar flight.”
The project also highlights the growing role played by the private sector in space exploration, once the exclusive preserve of government agencies.
Dr Friedman was in charge of developing solar sails for Nasa in the 1970s, and worked on a project to use the technology to intercept Halley’s Comet. But it was shelved because it was too expensive and deemed ahead of its time.
“Government agencies can afford it, but they get too ambitious, so projects become more expensive,” he said. “Then no one wants to take the risk.”
Dr Friedman left the agency and teamed up with Carl Sagan, a Nasa conslutant and popular astronomer, in 1979 to found the Planetary Society, the world’s largest non-profit, non-governmental space advocacy group.
The $4 million (£2.2 million) Cosmos 1 project was funded by Cosmos Studios, which was founded by Ann Druyan, Dr Sagan’s widow, and produces science-based films and DVDs. The spacecraft was built under contract by Russia’s Lavochkin Association and Space Re- search Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Data from the mission will be shared internationally, and if it succeeds, Nasa, the European Space Agency and others are expected to launch cosmic sails within a decade.
Solar sailing has been envisioned since the early 20th Century, but became possible only in the past ten years thanks to the development of super-lightweight materials.
Russian scientists were the first to suggest the idea. Fridrickh Arturovich Tsander, an engineer, wrote in 1924: “For flight in interplanetary space I am working on the idea of flying, using tremendous mirrors of very thin sheets, capable of achieving favourable results.”
Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, popularised the concept in his 1972 collection of short stories, The Wind From The Sun.
The technology has had its naysayers — notably Thomas Gold, the late British scientist who was Dr Friedman’s teacher at Cornell University. He argued that solar sails would not work because they would reflect all the light that hit them without absorbing any heat.
But Dr Friedman said that this argument was based on 19th-century theories of thermodynamics. “This is a test not of physics, but of engineering,” he said.
The spacecraft has been fitted into the nose of the Volna rocket and loaded on to the Delta III submarine, which is due to leave the northern port of Severmorsk, near Murmansk, today.
About 20 minutes after the three-stage Volna is fired from the submarine, Cosmos 1 should enter orbit at a distance of 512 miles. Its sails will be deployed 37 minutes later and, if they work correctly, they should be visible to the naked eye from the ground.
Cosmos 1 will then accelerate to 195mph in a day. As it gathers speed, it will move into a higher orbit.
It would reach 10,000mph in 100 days, according to its designers, but the sails are a mere 0.005mm thick and will quickly degrade, so it is likely to fall back to Earth as a fireball after a month.
That notwithstanding, the spacecraft will carry a CD with messages from its creators, including Ms Druyan, who is the head of Cosmos Studios.
Her message says: “Our ancestors devised a means to ride the winds across the high seas. They began the process of turning our species into an intercommunicating organism.
“The names of these ancient explorers are lost to us. Today we honour their courage and genius with this first flight of Cosmos 1. We seek to learn how to ride the light of our star across the immense ocean of space to the distant shores of other worlds.”
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