• Thumbnail for Solar sail
    Solar sails (also known as lightsails, light sails, and photon sails) are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight...
    99 KB (11,654 words) - 20:08, 1 August 2025
  • Thumbnail for Diffractive solar sail
    A diffractive solar sail, or diffractive lightsail, is a type of solar sail which relies on diffraction instead of reflection for its propulsion. Current...
    6 KB (570 words) - 16:44, 17 April 2025
  • Thumbnail for Electric sail
    electric sail (also known as an electric solar wind sail or an E-sail) is a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion using the dynamic pressure of the solar wind...
    17 KB (1,884 words) - 03:10, 25 February 2025
  • The fission sail is a type of spacecraft propulsion proposed by Robert Forward that uses fission fragments to propel a large solar sail-like craft. It...
    2 KB (320 words) - 14:41, 1 October 2023
  • Thumbnail for Avi Loeb
    exploring the possibility that ʻOumuamua is an artificial thin solar sail accelerated by solar radiation pressure in an effort to help explain the object's...
    52 KB (5,293 words) - 07:40, 4 August 2025
  • Thumbnail for LightSail
    LightSail is a project to demonstrate controlled solar sailing within low Earth orbit using a CubeSat. The project was developed by The Planetary Society...
    19 KB (1,854 words) - 15:44, 6 June 2025
  • between solar sail spacecraft. John Merton, a spaceship designer, develops and promotes a lightweight spacecraft with a large area of solar sail, to be...
    6 KB (714 words) - 05:03, 31 March 2025
  • Thumbnail for 1I/ʻOumuamua
    its way out of the Solar System, at speeds of 63 km/s (39 mi/s). More advanced options of using solar, laser electric, and laser sail propulsion, based...
    118 KB (10,694 words) - 18:34, 23 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for Radiation pressure
    materials for optimizing a solar sail, for instance. Momentary or hours long solar pressures can indeed escalate due to release of solar flares and coronal mass...
    40 KB (5,254 words) - 03:35, 30 July 2025
  • Starwisp (redirect from Microwave sail)
    the late Robert L. Forward. It is propelled by a microwave sail, similar to a solar sail in concept, but powered by microwaves from a human-made source...
    8 KB (1,070 words) - 10:18, 19 October 2024
  • Thumbnail for JAXA
    February 2006. However the solar sail did not deploy fully. ISAS tested a solar sail again as a sub payload of the SOLAR-B launch at 23 September 2006...
    69 KB (7,637 words) - 15:42, 2 August 2025
  • employs a solar sail to continuously modify its orbit in ways that gravity alone would not allow. Typically, a statite would use the solar sail to "hover"...
    3 KB (344 words) - 17:27, 6 January 2025
  • Thumbnail for Magnetic sail
    magnetic sail is a proposed method of spacecraft propulsion where an onboard magnetic field source interacts with a plasma wind (e.g., the solar wind) to...
    156 KB (21,841 words) - 16:26, 31 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for Solar constant
    radiation pressure, which aids in the calculation of a force on a solar sail. Solar irradiance is measured by satellites above Earth's atmosphere, and...
    13 KB (1,791 words) - 13:11, 18 June 2025
  • Thumbnail for CubeSat
    CubeSat (section Solar sail)
    for a given solar sail's area. However, solar sails still need to be quite large compared to the satellite, which means useful solar sails must be deployed...
    90 KB (9,914 words) - 20:59, 7 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for List of solar-powered products
    boat Tûranor PlanetSolar Solar bus Solar car Stella (solar vehicles) Solar golf cart Solar panels on spacecraft Solar sail Solar thermal rocket Energy...
    3 KB (316 words) - 19:00, 16 October 2024
  • Thumbnail for Cosmos 1
    Cosmos 1 (category Solar sail spacecraft)
    Studios and The Planetary Society to test a solar sail in space. As part of the project, an uncrewed solar-sail spacecraft named Cosmos 1 was launched into...
    12 KB (1,183 words) - 06:53, 28 July 2024
  • Thumbnail for Interstellar travel
    nuclear pulse propulsion, fission-fragment rocket, fusion rocket, beamed solar sail, and antimatter rocket. The benefits of interstellar travel include detailed...
    96 KB (10,119 words) - 10:34, 29 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for Breakthrough Starshot
    camera, computer, communications laser, a nuclear power source, and the solar sail must be miniaturized to fit within a mass limit. All components must be...
    33 KB (3,173 words) - 17:19, 30 June 2025
  • Thumbnail for The Planetary Society
    feasibility of solar sailing, but the rocket failed shortly after liftoff. LightSail was originally conceived as a series of three solar sail experiments...
    16 KB (1,462 words) - 09:45, 10 June 2025
  • Thumbnail for Spacecraft propulsion
    Spacecraft propulsion (category Discovery and exploration of the Solar System)
    the solar sail concept, NanoSail-D became the first such powered satellite to orbit Earth. As of August 2017, NASA confirmed the Sunjammer solar sail project...
    93 KB (8,457 words) - 18:35, 29 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for Znamya (satellite)
    Syromyatnikov, who served as the project's lead engineer. Originally devised as a solar sail, Syromyatnikov pivoted to using the proposed hardware as a space mirror...
    8 KB (619 words) - 09:23, 26 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for Interstellar Probe (1999)
    400-meter-diameter solar sail as a propulsion method (1 g/m2) combined with a 0.25 AU flyby of the Sun to achieve higher solar light pressure, after which the sail is...
    8 KB (568 words) - 18:16, 16 March 2025
  • Tron: Solar Sailer is an action game released by Mattel for Intellivision in 1983. The game is the third of three Intellivision games based on the Disney...
    3 KB (188 words) - 16:04, 13 July 2025
  • Thumbnail for 2069 Alpha Centauri mission
    allocated funding. A preliminary mission outline suggests the use of solar sails propelled by high energy lasers to increase propulsion. The proposed...
    3 KB (294 words) - 12:27, 25 January 2024
  • CubeSat satellites to deploy a 260 m (850 ft) long, 20 m2 (220 sq ft) solar sail ribbon between them. This mission was a first in a series of increasingly-complex...
    13 KB (1,069 words) - 06:45, 14 February 2025
  • CubeSail is a proposed nanosatellite project by the Surrey Space Centre (SSC) in England. The spacecraft is to be a 3U CubeSat propelled by a 25 m² solar...
    7 KB (596 words) - 23:24, 15 June 2024
  • Thumbnail for Sunjammer (spacecraft)
    Sunjammer (spacecraft) (category Solar sail spacecraft)
    Sunjammer (Solar Sail Demonstrator) was a NASA mission intended to demonstrate a solar sail constructed by LGarde, but was canceled before launch. The...
    10 KB (795 words) - 21:11, 19 June 2025
  • Thumbnail for IKAROS
    IKAROS (category Solar sail spacecraft)
    and control of a large, thin solar sail membrane (grey-blue areas numbered 3) Thin-film solar cells integrated into the sail to power the payload (black...
    27 KB (2,519 words) - 10:46, 17 July 2025
  • Outer Solar system) was a proposed mission concept to Trojan asteroids, which share Jupiter's orbit, using a hybrid solar sail for propulsion; the sail was...
    19 KB (1,875 words) - 01:45, 24 May 2025