In the United States, experts from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center conducted decisive tests on the solar sail, which they plan to use in the future to send ships into deep space. This situation was officially reported Web site NASA.
The key tests were conducted at space agency contractor Redwire’s facility in Longmont, Colorado. During the demonstration, the team successfully unfurled one of the sail’s four quadrants using special mechanisms and a 30-foot boom.
The space sail is a canvas 32 times thinner than a human hair, with a total area of 1,650 square meters and a thickness of only 2.5 microns. Made of polymer with aluminum coating.
The solar sail would provide many potential benefits to deep space exploration missions because it does not require any propellant and provides very high thrust at very low mass. This space propulsion system is well suited for small vehicles in new orbits.
This technology is expected to make it possible to study space weather and send space sailing ships to Venus and Mercury, as proximity to the Sun will provide good propulsion for such ships.
In the future, scientists plan to send solar sail vehicles to other stars, accelerating them to tremendous speeds with powerful lasers.
Previous researchers offered Send solar sail drones to neighboring star system Alpha Centauri.