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Cosmos 1 Ships In Preparation For June Launch

Once Cosmos 1 (illustrated) achieves Earth orbit, the mission team will spend the first few days monitoring the spacecraft and allowing any remaining air in the packed blades to leak out before deploying its eight solar sail blades.
Severomorsk, Russia (SPX) May 24, 2005
Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft, has shipped in preparation for a launch window that opens on June 21, 2005, traveling from the test facility of Lavochkin Association in Moscow to Severomorsk, Russia.

The innovative and first-of-its-kind solar sail, a project of The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios, will launch atop a converted ICBM from a submerged Russian submarine. It will deploy in Earth orbit and attempt the first controlled flight of a solar sail.

"Reaching this milestone puts us on the doorstep to space" said Louis Friedman, Planetary Society Executive Director and the Cosmos 1 Project Director.

"We are proud of our new spacecraft and hope that Cosmos 1 blazes a new path into the solar system, opening the way to eventual journeys to the stars."

The Planetary Society is working with the spacecraft developers, the Lavochkin Association and the Space Research Institute in Russia, to fly this solar sail mission.

Cosmos 1 was funded by Cosmos Studios, the science-based entertainment company led by Ann Druyan, who also serves as the solar sail mission's Program Director. Additional donations from members of The Planetary Society helped make the mission possible.

"Launching Cosmos 1 on the day of the summer solstice is a great way to honor our ancestors and to continue the journey to the stars that they began," said Druyan.

"As the rays of the sun strike the ancient astronomical observatories of Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon, Cosmos 1 will rise from the sea into space to take its place in the great story of exploration."

Cosmos 1 has attracted world-wide attention by being the first attempt at a revolutionary and potentially much faster way of moving through space, and because the project was created by an independent, non-profit organization and financed by a private company.

The combination of solar sail technology coupled with a submarine-based launch opens the door for new and low-cost space systems in the future.

Once Cosmos 1 achieves Earth orbit, the mission team will spend the first few days monitoring the spacecraft and allowing any remaining air in the packed blades to leak out before deploying its eight solar sail blades.

The pressure of photons - sunlight - bouncing off the highly reflective solar sail will provide the spacecraft's only form of propulsion.

NASA, the European Space Agency, Japan and Russia all have developed solar sails, but none has yet tried to prove that the sails can propel a spacecraft under controlled flight.

Russia and Japan have conducted flight tests of deployment, while NASA and ESA have conducted ground test deployments, but thus far they have no test flights scheduled.

Two U.S. government agencies, NOAA and NASA, have signed cooperative agreements with The Planetary Society to receive valuable flight data from the solar sail mission.

In return, the no-exchange-of-funds agreements permit the Society to utilize agency facilities and expertise in tracking and mission operations of Cosmos 1.

An experiment to accelerate the spacecraft with a microwave beam from Earth will be conducted during a later stage of the mission.

Led by James Benford of Microwaves Sciences and Prof. Gregory Benford of the University of California-Irvine, their team will use a NASA Deep Space Network radar antenna to send the beam to the spacecraft.

The Planetary Society must approve the activation of the experiment and will do so only after the prime mission objective of controlled solar sail flight is achieved.

An international tracking network will receive mission data at stations scattered around the globe, from Moscow to Majuro in the Marshall Islands. The spacecraft will be tracked from the ground through its radio and an on-board GPS system and micro-accelerometer.

Solar Sail Watch, a program designed for the general public, will invite people around the world to help track Cosmos 1 and photograph its progress across the night sky.

Once its sails unfurl, Cosmos 1 will be bright enough to be easily visible to the naked eye. The Planetary Society urges everyone to witness this historic mission first hand.

The spacecraft will be launched on a Volna rocket to an approximately 800-km high, circular, near polar orbit.

Konstantin Pichkhadze, first deputy of Designer General and Director General of Lavochkin Association, stated, "The solar sail is an important step in development of space technologies. Now we are running through the final stage of this project, which became a reality thanks to the efforts of The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios.

"Lavochkin Association has been creating automatic spacecraft since 1965 and performed the first soft landings on the Moon and Venus in the 1960's and 70's.

"Building the solar sail spacecraft has involved interesting and complicated problems, which we worked on solving with the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"The Lavochkin Association team developed a number of successful project and engineering solutions which helped us to create this small spacecraft to help conduct great space ventures."

Measuring Up to a Solar Sail

The idea of using large, reflective structures, like Cosmos 1, to "sail" through space is nothing new. In fact, it's been around for a long time - first suggested nearly 400 years ago by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, after he "discovered" comet tails being blown by what he believed to be a kind of solar breeze.


A four quadrant, 20-meter solar sail system is fully deployed during testing at NASA Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, Ohio. Image credit: NASA.
Kepler suggested ships could possibly move through space using large sails to capture this "breeze" from the Sun, much the way the wind pushes sailboats across water on Earth.

Fast forward to today, and NASA has taken the solar sail idea past the drawing board and into development and testing.

But before we get to the testing, what exactly is a solar sail, how does it work, and how large is "large?" First, the definition, and how it works:

Solar sails are giant, flat sheets of very thin, reflective material - 40-to-100 times thinner than a piece of writing paper - supported by an arrangement of lightweight booms or masts.

The sails reflect sunlight, which provide the force needed to push a spacecraft through space, without using any fuel.

This sunlight pressure also provides enough thrust to allow such maneuvers as hovering at a fixed point in space and rotating the vehicle's position in orbit - moves that would require a significant amount of fuel for conventional rocket systems.

As for "how large is large," the size of a solar sail depends on the spacecraft's intended destination. But in terms of a typical sail, imagine a football field.

The standard college football field is 120 yards long and 53 yards wide. That's the approximate size of a typical solar sail that could be used for space travel.

Right now, NASA is testing two competing 20-meter (66 foot) solar sail propulsion system designs - a milestone in the development of this unique, fuel-free propulsion technology. The sails undergoing tests are made by ATK Space Systems and L'Garde.

Over the last few months, the two companies have been putting finishing touches on their system designs. But long before now, both had to "grow" a little to handle the large structures.

L'Garde engineers moved the design, manufacture, assembly and testing of its sail system design into a state-of-the-art facility in late 2004. The building can accommodate a fully deployed, or opened, 20-meter solar sail and boom system with room to spare.

Workers wear protective gear, such as hair and shoe nets, lab coats and latex gloves, to protect the hardware from unwanted contaminants or residues, such as a loose hair, food crumbs or "sticky fingers."

ATK Space Systems-Goleta has its own high-tech facility for the assembly and testing of its 20-meter solar sail and boom system design. The company leased and modified the building in 2004 to handle the large structures and to meet their testing needs.

Protective clothing also is a must for ATK's engineers to keep the lab area as clean as possible. For both companies, a key practice while working on their solar sail and boom systems is, "handle with care." So how can you get such a large system into space?

For L'Garde and ATK Space Systems, the answer is found in a "box" about the size of a suitcase. Each company developed a lightweight, compact stowage container from which the solar sail and boom system is deployed, via remote control. The container is attached to a spacecraft, which is launched by rocket into space.

NASA is testing both 20-meter solar sail system designs at Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, Ohio, from April to July.

The tests are being conducted in Plum Brook's Space Power Facility - the world's largest space environment simulation chamber, which simulates the vacuum and temperature extremes of space.

ATK Space Systems-Goleta began its tests in April, while L'Garde's testing begins in June. Each test series is expected to last up to 30 days. NASA's Langley Research Center will provide structural models and instrumentation for each company's test series.

Solar sail technology was selected for development in August 2002 by NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Along with sail system design projects by L'Garde and ATK Space Systems-Goleta, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was tapped to develop an integrated set of computer-based solar sail simulation tools.

These are just three of a number of efforts undertaken by NASA Centers, industry and academia to develop solar sail technology.

Solar sail technology is being developed by the In-Space Propulsion Technology Program, managed by NASA's Science Mission Directorate and implemented by the In-Space Propulsion Technology Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

The program's objective is to develop in-space propulsion technologies that can enable or benefit near or mid-term NASA space science missions by significantly reducing cost, mass and travel times.

Related Links
Solar Sail Watch at The Planetary Society
Cosmos Studios
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ATK and NASA Successfully Test First Solar Sail Propulsion System
Minneapolis MN (SPX) May 09, 2005
Alliant Techsystems and NASA have successfully tested the functional deployment and attitude control of an ultra-lightweight, high-performing solar sail propulsion system.



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