Author Topic: Japan's IKAROS Successfully Rolls Out First Solar Sail in Space  (Read 2560 times)

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Offline Attero Dominatus

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It’s sink or sail time for Japan’s IKAROS spacecraft, and according to initial reports from JAXA the unfurling of the first solar sail deployed for actual deep space travel went off without a hitch.

But the successful sail deployment isn’t a guarantee of success. IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) still has to get moving, and mission handlers say in their blog posts today that it will be a few weeks before we know if the sail is really working the way it is supposed to.

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If this proves to work, it will pave the way for laser sails and statites (satellites held against gravity by photon pressure).
« Last Edit: June 10, 2010, 07:48:14 PM by Attero Dominatus »
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Offline vesta111

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Re: Japan's IKAROS Successfully Rolls Out First Solar Sail in Space
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2010, 05:32:26 PM »
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If this proves to work, it will pave the way for laser sails and statites (satellites held against gravity by photon pressure).

How wonderful, the sci-fi books of my youth become reality, sort of.

Question, Space is not empty, at any moment space is full of stuff traveling at thousands of mph.   Big rocks down to fast moving bits the size of the head of a pin.

If you have ever seen anything sand blasted you know the power of even one grain of sand traveling 900 mph.   What is to keep an unmanned craft with solar sails from being torn to bits in a solar storm??

What happens when the craft gets beyond our solar winds, will it just drift aimlessly until caught in gravity of a fast moving comet?

Check out our moon tonight, the moon is in no way smooth as a pool ball. It is covered with pits worse then a young teens face with acne.  Our system with its 9 planets has for billions of years been assaulted by space debris, every day some kind of strike is made on our Earth by stuff from " OUT THERE"

I know that we have sent ships out to photo some of our planets, so far some are still sending back pictures and information.  This could be due to pure luck or the conditions were correct for the mission.

Put it this way, we have out huge passenger jets that can span the earth with no problem every day, but a few times a year our planes get a seagull in the intake of an engine and has a big problem on their hands.

Offline Attero Dominatus

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Re: Japan's IKAROS Successfully Rolls Out First Solar Sail in Space
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2010, 06:14:11 PM »
There is little to worry about debris outside of low Earth orbit. Most of the stuff in between the stars and planets is lone hydrogen atoms, at an average density of about one atom for every cubic centimeter. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml

If the asteroid belt is any indication, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud have very low densities too. Most space probes pass through the belt without coming even within one million kilometers of an asteroid and the Voyager probes are still sending back information.

If we were talking about a laser sail traveling at a few percent lightspeed or more, the interstellar hydrogen and dust could be ionized - maybe by allowing a little bit of the drive beam photons through the sail - and channeled away by magnetic fields. Of course traveling to the stars is way in the future, and we will have better technology to avoid problems like that by then.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2010, 06:25:43 PM by Attero Dominatus »
Those who would trade their liberty for temporary security will get neither. --Benjamin Franklin.