A California physicist will announce plans for the first known attempt to push a spacecraft into the Earth’s orbit with energy beamed up from the ground. The satellite will be called the Cosmos Sail, the first solar-sail craft to orbit Earth. The physics team developed the sail with researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Made from lightweight layers of aluminized mylar, the sail will allow a craft to be propelled from low orbit to high orbit and ultimately into interplanetary space, driven by microwave energy, similar to the way wind pushes a sailboat across the sea. From the University of California at Irvine:Satellite to be “Boosted”
Special Cosmos Sail Uses Earth-bound Energy to Assist Ascent
Irvine, Calif., Nov. 4, 2002 – UC Irvine physicist Gregory Benford will announce plans for the first known attempt to push a spacecraft into the Earth’s orbit with energy beamed up from the ground.
Benford will give details on the unique project at the First International Symposium on Beamed-Energy Propulsion (ISBEP) Wednesday, Nov. 6, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
The joint UCI-Microwave Sciences Inc. mission will take place next spring, commencing with the satellite launching from a Russian submarine off the coast of St. Petersburg. Benford and his brother, James Benford, the president of Microwave Sciences, will chair two sessions on microwave-powered propulsion during the symposium. They will also answer questions about the upcoming mission at a press conference at 5:30 p.m. CST, on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
The satellite will be called the Cosmos Sail, the first solar-sail craft to orbit Earth. The Benfords developed the sail with researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Made from lightweight layers of aluminized mylar, the sail will allow a craft to be propelled from low orbit to high orbit and ultimately into interplanetary space, driven by microwave energy, similar to the way wind pushes a sailboat across the sea. By using these electromagnetic waves, spacecraft would burn significantly less engine fuel – the most prohibitive expense of interplanetary voyaging.
In describing the launch project, Gregory Benford, a NASA consultant for the Mars Outpost project, said once the spacecraft is at about 800 kilometers altitude, its sail will be deployed. After the craft is flown in its first trials, a microwave beam emitted from the Jet Propulsion Lab’s Goldstone 70-meter antennae in California’s Mojave Desert will be used to give the spacecraft an extra push. Instruments on board the satellite will measure how much the sail accelerates due to the microwave boost.
While the push received from the Goldstone microwave beam will not be strong, it will be significant, since the spacecraft’s mission is to test the feasibility of beam-boosted sails.
“The basic ability to move energy and force through space weightlessly is key to a genuinely 21st century type of spacecraft,” Benford said. “This marks a significant attempt to make space travel more effective and cost-efficient.”
Press conference information The symposium will be in the Bevill Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. The pressroom and the Tuesday night press conference will be in Bevill Center, room 261. For reporters unable to attend, an interactive conference-call system with a limited number of outside lines will be in place. Reporters interested in participating in the conference call should dial (256) 864-2652 no earlier than 5 p.m. CST.
Additional information about the Cosmos Sail mission will be posted on the ISBEP Web site: http://urnet.uah.edu/isbep/. Other material from the ISBEP program will also be posted to that Web site.
The complete symposium program schedule, with the names of the presenters and their topics, is available online. More information about the symposium is available here.