NASA solar sail to be Siriusly visible in orbit from Earth

NASA is to send a solar sail demonstrator into orbit next week, and there is a good chance that the sail, measuring 860 square feet (80 square meters), will be visible from Earth. NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System unfurled on the floor with engineers working on it Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (click to enlarge …

[Neil Barnes]

80 square meters, eh?

That'll be 3.85 nanoWales, then.

[ravenviz]

Re: 80 square meters, eh?

'About 4' will suffice.

[Bebu]

Re: 80 square meters, eh?

《That'll be 3.85 nanoWales, then.》

Or 14.68 microSarks.

Or 0.1020 Rockalls. Slightly larger than 1.0 effall.

[AlanSh]

Re: 80 square meters, eh?

No, we have a new unit of measurement:

"roughly six US parking spots"

Alan

[TeeCee]

Re: 80 square meters, eh?

Last time I parked in a US car park the spots came in several sizes, labelled by which type of car they were for.

This is eminently sensible but makes the concept bloody useless as a measurement, as how large whatever it is is is dependant on what you drive.

[DS999]

Great

More stuff to interfere with astronomy on Earth.

[PhilipN]

“The Promise of Space”

Arthur C. Clarke - creaking memory cells but I believe that is where I first read about solar sails.

It’s only taken 50 years.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: “The Promise of Space”

I submit, though, that the classic solar sail story is Niven and Pournelle's 'The Mote in God's Eye', though written ten years later than Clarke's Sunjammer. It's hard to argue with a laser propulsion system powerful enough to outshine the star, and hungry enough to bankrupt a society.

On the gripping hand, Wikipedia tells me of mentions by Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, and Poul Anderson before or around the same time as Clarke.

[Sleep deprived]

The sail may be visible from Earth

Easy to notice: it'll be the only square object in the sky.

[Arthur the cat]

Re: The sail may be visible from Earth

Easy to notice: it'll be the only square object in the sky.

And thus a new set of UFO claims is born.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: The sail may be visible from Earth

No rounded corners

[Dostoevsky]

Re: The sail may be visible from Earth

You can change that by sending `style="border-radius: 10px;"` to the satellite...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: The sail may be visible from Earth

"Easy to notice: it'll be the only square object in the sky."

Thus proving to the conspiracy nuts that the Earth is flat and the stars are just a back projection on a big LCD panel that now has a stuck pixel.

[Bebu]

A new boom design

Hopefully better and more robust umbrellas for we earthbound mortals.

These satellites are to be in sun synchronous orbit which I assume means if their orbit is in the plane of the ecliptic that the triangle made made by the sun, satellite and the earth is constant in its angles.

I am wondering whether I could use that property to determine my longitude with my sextant and without a chronometer.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Lethargic

NASA seems to be moving VERY slowly with Solar Sails. It has been at least a decade since the Japanese sent a solar-sail craft to Venus, yet NASA is still dabbling in LEO.

Since these craft make interstellar journeys feasible I'd like to see some more urgency.

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Lethargic

Hear hear! Since I can only upvote you once.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Lethargic

NASA seems to be moving VERY slowly with Solar Sails.

Yeah, well, there's very little "thrust", it takes YEARS to build up to an appreciable velocity.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Lethargic

Does it matter if the mission itself takes years if not decades? Remember the turtle and the hare?

[STOP_FORTH]

Variable units

Nice to see NASA using decent units. I presume they chose "soccer fields" as they don't have one size.

Probably helps with the unfurling?

[dunbankin]

Going back 60 years...

I remember watching Echo 1 and Echo 2 with my dad's binoculars in the '60s. Not solar sails, but similar. They were huge shiny balloons in low earth orbit, designed as passive telecom satellites. - no on-board electronics. You bounced a signal off them. They were as bright as Sirius, and quite fast moving. Didn't last long in LEO - there never was a Echo 3...

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

I cannot help but feel that NEONSAT will herald the start of a new spectator sport: map North Korean military installations and air defences, publish an optimised attack plan against them, then see how many frenzied rants can be induced in the Nork's leadership from this.