Japan launches solar sails
By Tariq Malik
SPACE.com
(SPACE.com) -- A piece of science fiction became fact this week as Japanese researchers launched not one, but two large solar sails, successfully deploying the gossamer-thin sheets in space during a brief rocket flight.
It marked the first time any solar sail was successfully deployed in space, despite a number of sail research programs in nations around the world.
Solar sails are designed to be pushed along by light particles and have long-been a target for propulsion researchers hoping to find ways around the need for spacecraft to lug heavy propellant with them on long space voyages.
Scientists with Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, part of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, launched their reflective solar sail duo aboard a small S-310 rocket during an August 9 flight. The launch was staged from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan at 3:15 p.m. local time.
While the space shot lasted just over six minutes, it was long enough to deploy a clover-shaped sail in space about 1.6 minutes into the flight and 75 miles (122 kilometers) above Earth. At 3.8 minutes after launch, the clover sail was jettisoned and a second, fan-shaped sail unfurled at an altitude of 105 miles (169 kilometers). After deploying its two sails, the rocket plunged into the Pacific Ocean.
Both metallic sails measured just 7.5 micrometers thick. One micrometer (or micron) is about the size of an average bacterium.
In addition to ISAS's successful sail deployment, NASA's solar sail propulsion team at Marshall Space Flight Center announced their successful August 9 deployment of two 33-foot (10-meter) sails in ground-based vacuum chambers.
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