Orbiting Space Without Fuel? NASA’s Working on It!

NASA has approved an innovative solar sail concept to undertake the third and final phase of its development, and the end game is to orbit the Sun’s poles without using a single drop of fuel.

“As we venture farther out into the cosmos than ever before, we’ll need innovative, cutting-edge technologies to drive our missions,” says NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program helps to unlock visionary ideas—like novel solar sails—and bring them closer to reality.”

The diffractive solar sail project has been extended for two years, and thanks to a funding award of $2 million, exploration and development will continue. Through Phases 1 and 2, sail materials were tested, and the mirror-like surface turned out to be the best to harness the pressure exerted by photons of light to move forward the ship. Therefore, being diffractive with small grates embedded into thin films, the solar sail can be smaller, more steerable, and versatile than current refractive ones. Phase 3 of the NIAC program will allow more ground tests crucial to the eventual solar mission.