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. 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.

New "Rectenna" Makes Possible Higher-Energy Microwave Beams Huntsville - Nov 06, 2002 - Plans for an antenna system that converts beamed microwave energy into electricity at power levels ten thousand times higher than previously possible will be presented here tomorrow by its Canadian inventor. Dr. Adrian Alden, a research scientist at the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa, is scheduled to present plans for the microwave antennae during the Wednesday sessions of the First International Symposium on Beam Energy Propulsion at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The proposed rectifying antenna, or rectenna, was designed for use in a microwave-powered hypersonic aircraft. The ability to efficiently convert high-power microwave beams into electric current might open the use of these beams in a wide range of applications, including launching spacecraft, boosting satellites into higher orbits, and supplying power to aircraft during long-duration flights.

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."

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