NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) can be seen with the naked eye as it orbits Earth, and can be tracked with a helpful app. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

During the Age of Sail, ships circled the globe on voyages of discovery and trade. That era ended in the 1800s, when coal-fired steam engines began to replace wind power. Now we may be entering a new ...

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 ...

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System spacecraft in Earth orbit. NASA / Aero Animation / Ben Schweighart Earlier this year, NASA loaded a microwave-sized device packed ...

Spacecraft data has confirmed successful deployment of the futuristic technology. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. More than four ...

The ribbon solar sail will be a solar sail design using a thin film strip embedded with diffractive gratings. It is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project. This configuration leverages ...

A microwave-sized spacecraft with large silver wings is tumbling in orbit as engineers work to fix a glitch that’s causing it to lose orientation. After deploying four composite booms on board the ...

An experimental NASA solar sail can be seen in the night sky as it orbits the Earth. NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) launched in April 2024 atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The ...