Solar sail will fly again despite mishap

A drawing of the solar sail

By Richard Stenger
CNN

(CNN) -- A private space organization intends to send a solar sail into orbit, despite the failure of a prototype last month, organizers of the $4-million project said this week.

A Russian submarine sent a small version of the Cosmos 1 aloft for a suborbital test flight July 20. But the spacecraft did not separate from the rocket and could not deploy its two solar blades.

Nevertheless, the Planetary Society will move ahead with plans to send an eight-bladed version of the sail into orbit in early 2002, the group announced Wednesday.

Like the previous test, the craft will roar into the sky atop a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, launched from a Russian navy submarine in the Barents Sea.

The cause of the July failure was insufficient thrust from the third stage of the Volna rocket, a Russian review team determined.

"This error had nothing to do with the payload or solar sail spacecraft, but was a rare problem in our rocket," said Viacheslav Danyelkin of the Makeev Rocket Design Bureau.

Before the mishap, the Volnas had flown 146 consecutive times without a problem, according to Makeev, which manages the rockets.

Engineers have worked for years on developing solar sails, which could send probes much faster and farther than current propulsion systems.

The revolutionary technology relies on super-lightweight, super-reflective materials, spread over wide surface areas, which would harness streams of photons from the sun to propel craft along the "heavenly breeze."

The Cosmos I orbiter would only demonstrate that the technology could work, said Planetary Society President Louis Friedman. NASA scientists working on a similar project hope to launch a solar sail within the decade.

A solar sail could travel five times faster than the most distant spacecraft, NASA said. If one launched in 2010, in eight years it would overtake Voyager I, despite the fact the latter would have had a major head start.

Launched in 1977, Voyager I has passed far beyond the planets and is approaching the outer boundary of the solar system, according to NASA scientists.

Cosmos I is a project of the Planetary Society, an international group of space exploration enthusiasts; Cosmos Studies, a space media company; and the Babakin Space Center, a subsidiary of a Russian spacecraft manufacturer.