[X] My Assistant

[ljk4-1]

Solar Sail NEA Missions Proposed

If we chose to launch an interstellar probe using near-term technologies, it would almost surely be a solar sail, unfurled on a close approach to the Sun and flung outward at speeds that could get it to Alpha Centauri in perhaps 1000 years. That’s the thinking of Gregory Matloff, author of Deep Space Probes: To the Outer Solar System and Beyond (Springer, 2005) and a leading proponent of interstellar studies. Later technologies might also use sails, driven by laser or microwave or even particle beams. But as we take incremental steps toward an interstellar future, solar sails have to be developed first.

On that score, it’s interesting to note the contributions of the Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany’s aerospace research center and space agency. An early consolidation of sail studies, for example, came from a joint NASA/DLR feasibility study conducted in 1996-97. The working group recommended a demonstration mission that could help develop the basic principles of sail fabrication, packaging, storage, deployment, and control.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=517