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Rough test flight for first solar sail

Cosmos 1

The solar sail has eight triangular blades which are made of 5-micron-thin alumised reinforced Myar totalling 600 square metres. Each blade can be angled similar to a helicopter blade to control the motion of the spacecraft.

The world's first interplanetary solar sail has had a troubled test flight, but space scientists are optimistic that it will still be launched later this year.

The privately-funded Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 spacecraft was launched Friday from a submerged nuclear Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. While the launch was successful, the final command to separate the spacecraft from the Volna rocket was not executed.

The rocket and spacecraft crashed on the Kamchatka Peninsula, south of eastern Siberia in Russia, between the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, where recovery teams are still searching for their remains.

Seismographic stations in the area recorded the impact of the remains landing in the area.

The exact cause of the failure is still under investigation, and the final results will not be known until the technical teams have completed their analysis.

Nevertheless, Planetary Society President Bruce Murray said the test still fulfilled important technological and program objectives, such as preflight testing, launch of the spacecraft using the Volna launch vehicle, and integrated tracking and analysis.

"I am optimistic that we can keep on schedule to launch Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft, later this year," said Murray.

The mission aims to orbit the 40-kilogram Cosmos 1 at an altitude of about 850 kilometres for several weeks, to test the ability of the team to control the spacecraft.

Space travel without fuel

Solar sails can be used to boost or decrease the orbits of spacecrafts travelling between planets within our solar system. They use the momentum from sunlight to carry them forward.

As the photons (light particles) are reflected from the mirror-like surface of the sails, they give the sail a slight "push". The force is controlled by the angle of the sail with respect to the Sun.

The great advantage of a solar sail is that it requires no fuel. So, while a solar sail gives a very low thrust, it can work continuously, pushing spacecraft faster and faster - in time, even faster than a chemical rocket.

While astronomers believe that solar sails may some day take us to stars beyond our solar system, energy from sunlight is weak once a spacecraft gets past Jupiter. The plan is to use large lasers orbiting in the solar system to power the sails to distant stars.

Cosmos 1 is funded by a new science-based media and entertainment venture by Ann Druyan (widow of Carl Sagan, the Society's co-founder) and Joe Firmage (Internet entrepreneur and founder of USWeb).

The Planetary Society is co-ordinating the development of the sail and has contracted the Babakin Space Center and the Space Research Institute to build and operate the craft.