Researchers from Tuskegee University, Alabama, have developed a new photonic crystal (a kind of ...

Nasa has unfurled a solar sail in space for the first time, aiming to harness the propulsive power of sunlight for interstellar travel. The US space agency revealed that it had deployed the solar sail ...

NASA is about to test its Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, which if is successful will unlock a new method of cheap space travel in the solar system and perhaps even beyond. On April 23 NASA ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A large triangular sail made of silver foil is unfurled in a hangar as scientists look on. NASA has reached a significant ...

A tiny spacecraft orbiting Earth appeared to successfully unfurl a solar sail Tuesday to test the potential of using only sunlight for propulsion, mission officials said. Deployment commands were sent ...

The stakes are high on several fronts: propulsion, climate technology, and the future of the night sky. Solar sails promise propulsion without propellant, but they also raise questions about orbital ...

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), a dazzling spacecraft designed to make use of the tiny amounts of radiation pressure exerted by sunlight for propulsion, is still spinning through ...

Turns out, it's as tough to drop inward into the inner solar system, as it is to head outward. The problem stems from losing momentum from a launch starting point on Earth. It can take missions ...

NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Scout is tucked away safely inside the agency’s powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The solar sailing CubeSat is one of ...

Most space missions rely on chemical rockets for propulsion. Rockets must carry fuel, which increases spacecraft mass and ...

Spacecraft outfitted with sails and propelled by the sun are no longer the stuff of science fiction or theoretical space missions. Now, a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher is taking solar ...