NASA's solar sail successfully spreads its wings in space
Spacecraft data has confirmed successful deployment of the futuristic technology.
@Rangelus@lemmy.nz You were curious about this.
Cheers mate. Neat stuff!
I wonder how much force a sail of that size is expected to produce?
I just did some quick maths (and assuming my formulas are correct), beaming at it with a 10 MW laser would cause it to speed up by 0.001 m/s² assuming the sail has 20 kg mass. So not very much, but also not nothing.