Solar Sails: A Far-Sailed Concept
By: Spatium Nuntius
Tags: Space Exploration, Solar Sail, Science, Space Travel

The common person would think that sending robots, satellites, probes, and even humans throughout the Solar System is possible, and quite an outlook into the future. Any further, however, and you encounter mind-bending distances incomprehensible to the human brain. Sending anything out beyond the solar system seems outlandish as well as far-fetched as anyone would think. Or, is it? Perhaps there is a way right in front of our eyes, perhaps we didn’t think of an obvious solution? Allow me to explain to you a crazy yet simple idea, something easy to develop yet so hard to make. I introduce you to the solar sail.

The Solar Sail

A Solar Sail is a massive sheet of Mylar that uses the pressure from sunlight to propel itself to unthinkable speeds. It can carry few basic scientific pieces of equipment with it to help with the observation of exoplanets and carry that information back to Earth.

Solar Sails are around 344 square feet or 32 square meters. However, their size varies, and some can be as large as a football field! While their size may vary, the solar Sails are consistently very, very thin, comparable to that of a piece of paper.

The solar sail was made like this because it needs to absorb the energy of the photons coming from the sun as said earlier, as well as keeping the mass as low as possible for maximum efficiency. It isn’t just the sun, however. Even photons from a laser can accelerate the Solar Sails.

The Purpose

Solar Sails primarily serve as a beacon, marking the extent of human technology reaching a symbolic milestone in space travel as well as scientific progress. However, as stated earlier, the solar sails can be equipped with scientific equipment that allows the solar sails to observe any exoplanet in the given vicinity.

Interstellar travel may be the most prominent promise given by the Sails, though it isn’t the only one. They can observe many planets within our own system and small asteroids, especially the 2 ice giants Uranus and Neptune as well as their respective moons, which haven’t been observed by any other satellite besides the Voyagers, launched in the '70s.

Solar Sails can also go into close vicinity to the sun, an object so dangerous most satellites cannot go within 27 million miles of it! However, it is severely outclassed by the recent Solar Parker probe that has far better equipment for observing the sun and orbits 4 million miles from the sun!

History of The Solar Sail

The concept of a Solar Sail has been around for centuries, albeit merely a concept until recent years. Solar Sails were first made as an idea in 1608 by the famous astronomer known as Johannes Kepler, who shared it with his friend Gallileo Galilei, and from there became well known as a concept.

In 1873, a major scientific discovery by James Maxwell proved that sunlight can put pressure in the form of a photon on a given object. This discovery is the basis of the operation of a solar sail and proves that the Solar Sail concept is possible.

Solar Sails were eventually be constructed and launched centuries later. In 2005, when the companies “The Planetary Society” and “Cosmos Studios” launched the first solar sail called the Cosmos-1. The purpose of this experiment is to test if a solar sail truly worked and can accelerate using the sun’s photons.

After that launch, many other Solar Sail launches such as Sunjammer and IKAROS were launched by big companies like JAXA and NASA respectively. In 2016, a Russian Billionaire by the name of Yuri Milner invested $100 million in the launching of Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to send Solar Sails to Alpha Centauri. More on that below.

Progress

The breakthrough Starshot Seems to be the most promising project to send solar sails out into the stars and their exoplanets. A launch with these solar sails is likely to come within the 2030s and arrive in the Alpha Centauri system 4.37 light-years away in around the 2050s. However, it will be impossible to attach a human onto any of these solar sails, as it will add too much mass.

There will be an extra lazer propelling these solar sails as well, allowing them to accelerate to 20% the speed of light or a whopping 100 million miles per hour! The observational technologies that are supposed to be attached to the Sails are currently in development, as well as the lazers needed to accelerate the sails to this speed.

Conclusion

Basic Interstellar Travel may be possible, and the work of Solar Sails is proof. Science Fiction often describes travel on such scales with futuristic gargantuan ships, or through warping in space through wormholes like in the hit movie series star wars. However, none of this is necessary for basic observation of exoplanets far outside our system. Solar Sails are the most prominent form of interstellar travel with our current technology. But, the universe is vast, so vast even, that any galaxy and even most stars in our own galaxy are far, far out of reach even with this new technology. However, the universe is yet so big that there are endless possibilities, and even what seems impossible now may be normal arbitrarily far into the future. Only the power of the human brain, even yours, can make any dream come true.

Resources:

https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3#:~:text=This%20involves%20a%20ground%2Dbased,100%20million%20miles%20an%20hour.

https://www.livescience.com/32593-how-do-solar-sails-work-.html#:~:text=Inflatable%20booms%20provide%20the%20sheets,sun's%20light%2C%20according%20to%20NASA.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/31jul_solarsails#:~:text=In%201873%2C%20James%20Clerk%20Maxwell,pressure%20effects%20loudly%20and%20clearly.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20190611_history-of-solar-sailing-ls2.png