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First Controllable Solar Sail Launched Today

Posted by timothy on Tue Jun 21, 2005 07:16 PM
from the now-for-obedience-school dept.
Space Science Technology
clustermonkey writes "The first controllable solar sail was launched earlier today from a Russian sub in the Barents Sea. The Planetary Society, founded by Carl Sagan, organized the project and were funded by Cosmos Studios, founded by Sagan's widow. There have been 2 other solar sail deployments by others, but this will be the first to attempt controlled flight. The sail is scheduled to deploy June 25." All may not be well, though: Snot Locker writes "The Cosmos 1 Weblog is showing that, although the launch initially looked successful, they can't seem to find it or hear it. Bummer. Previous Slashdot coverage on the Cosmos 1 Solar Sail mission can be found here."
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[+] Finnish Electric Solar Sail Nears Implementation 66 comments
eldavojohn writes "A recent meeting held by the Finnish Meteorological Institute has resulted in plans to build an electric solar sail that will circle the Earth, gaining speed to test its acceleration. The purpose? 'A flight out of the solar system to measure the gas, dust, plasma and magnetic field in the undisturbed interstellar space would perhaps be the "flagship" thing to do,' said Pekka Janhunen, a researcher developing the sail at the FMI. The details and papers of this project (over two years in the making) are also available. I certainly hope it will show more success than the launch of the similar U.S.-Russian venture and its subsequent complete failure."
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  • "Bummer" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:17PM (#12877354)

    It's a bit more than a "Bummer":

    Engineer #1: Yessiree, that solar sail is up there! This calls for a celebration!
    Engineer #2: Um. Where is it?
    Engineer #1: [points] Up there!
    Engineer #2: Where up there?
    Engineer #1: Way, way up there.
    Engineer #2: You have no idea, right?
    Engineer #1: [weak laugh] Nah.
    Engineer #1: [shrug] Bummer.
    • There are a few explanations here:
      • The secret remenants of the US 'star wars' program decided it was a 'terrorist act' and shot it down (and now they've realized that they can't even boast of this 'success').
      • The russians forgot to disable the 'stealth' features of the missile.
      • The launch was on paper only. They didn't expect people to actually check the results.
      • It was fueled with hydrogen Peroxide and alcohol... too much of the alcohol was saved to celebrate the successful launch.
      • Translation error in th
      • I hope they included a timer which will deploy the sail even without a command, just in case a problem in communication/control were to happen.
          • If you want to test a wether a car rolls down a hill when you remove the brakes, do you have to contact the board computer to see it moving or would it suffice for the board computer to automatically remove the breaks?

  • Deja Vu (Score:5, Informative)

    by rufusdufus (450462) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:21PM (#12877374)
    I swear I remember this happening before. [spaceflightnow.com]
    • Earlier today on Spaceflightnow (the quote seems to be gone in the current version of the story), the project leader was quoted as saying something like "there is a significant chance of failure". Similarly, the leader of the ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars lander publicly stated that he estimated the chances of success at about 50-50. I think we could all waste a lot less time if we just ignored missions whose own leaders inspire that much confidence. In space, you have zero tolerance for error, so what may see

  • uh oh (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrDoh! (71235) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:21PM (#12877375) Homepage Journal
    I'm just waiting for when it comes back as a near omnipotent being and starts demanding to see it's creator.
      • Game Over. Insert Geek Points to Continue.

        Dont you mean Como, if you're trying to follow the Voyager (whatever) -> V'Ger translation. It is called Cosmos 1 not Solar Sail after all.
  • 404 File Not Found

    The requested URL (science/05/06/21/2251211.shtml?tid=160&tid=126&ti d=14) was not found.

    ...

    Unfortunately I can't locate a google cache for the missing spacecraft.

    Anyone able to post a mirror?

  • Always the risk. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reality-bytes (119275) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:23PM (#12877390) Homepage
    I really rather hope this project is okay and only suffering from a 'glitch'. (ie: unexpected orbit)

    The trouble is, every time you take what is essentially a robotically controlled device and send it into space giving it a good *shake* in the process (rockets really do vibrate a lot), you run the risk of breaking something.

    Of course, you combat this by duplicating as much of the systems as you can but when your experiment requires a very low mass (ala solar sail controller) I wonder how much redundancy is possible?

    Still. I hope Cosmos sparks back to life /is found and they get a sucessful experiment. I would be good to prove that solar-sailing is a viable solar-locomotion concept rather than just proving that electronics packages are fragile things.

    • Re:Always the risk. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei (128717) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:45PM (#12877529) Homepage
      If you want to know what the people organizing the mission are thinking, the Planetary Society's Latest Update [planetary.org] section is a good spot to go. As it stands, the following has been stated:

      * The signal didn't dissapear suddenly when the kick fired - it became irregular, and then dissapeared after three minutes.

      * The signal was received clearly after launch for six minutes.

      * There were irregular readings coming from the Volna; however, clearly the craft detached, or there wouldn't have been six minutes of signal.

      * STRATCOM can't find the satellite. That doesn't mean that it's gone - only that it's not where they told them to look. Likewise, the lack of ground station reception could mean the same thing. It could be in the wrong orbit, which is actually a more common phenominon than a total craft loss.

      * The chance of signal acquisition at the early two stations was only considered marginal to begin with. The big test will be at the permanent stations in Paska Ves, and especially the Tarusa and Bear lakes.

      * Not receiving a signal from a spacecraft during the first few orbits is "not extremely unusual". Nonetheless, they do sound a bit nervous.

  • Presumably... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Otter (3800) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:24PM (#12877394) Journal
    ...if the craft suffered "failure to enter orbit at all", presumably that means it hit space and kept going, right? I'd imagine someone would have noticed a Russian ICBM falling randomly out of the sky.

    • Re:Presumably... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tackhead (54550) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:34PM (#12877475)
      >...if the craft suffered "failure to enter orbit at all", presumably that means it hit space and kept going, right? I'd imagine someone would have noticed a Russian ICBM falling randomly out of the sky.

      In other words, what you're trying to say is that somewhere downrange of post-Soviet Russia, solar sail will eventually find yo*CRUNCH*
      NO CARRIER

      • Gieven the young average age of the slashdot crowd, many may not be familiar with the joys of BBS'ing on modems, so I dare say that in post-Soviet Russia, no carrier jokes are for old people.

        I mean, in post Soviet Russia, ICBM welcomes you as overlord for old people.
    • NO, I think what it means is it hit the ground with a resounding THUNK!

      There's a good chance that Russian/US military know exactly where the damn thing fell but aren't telling anyone lest they give away previously unconfirmed capabilities or somesuch.

    • Re:Presumably... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheKidWho (705796) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:46PM (#12877532)
      I know what really happened

      You see, the Russians never launched Cosmos 1, they realized that these guys would be a bunch of suckers so what they did, is they got them to pay for the launch, and then launched their own new spy satellite In the same orbit that Cosmos 1 was supposed to be in. And now they are going to tell them "tough luck, you must have out bad communications equipment on her or something". So the Americans pay the money, and the Russians get to launch their spy satellite.

      Next Week on Conspiracy Theory 101
      Sony and Microsoft are really in bed against Nintendo!
  • When I tied a Keep on Truckin' T-shirt to an Estes Andromeda.

  • Bummer indeed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by J05H (5625) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:24PM (#12877396) Homepage
    There is a chance that it will succeed in deploying. If it's lost, it's double the downer: I helped pay for it as a Planetary Society member. PS also developed a Mars Microphone for the MPL (lost), DVD and sundial for current rovers and a balloon-borne "snake" of sensors that never flew. Dammit, I want this one to work, finally.

    ad astra!
    • So umm, why can't all space research be paid for this way? Or at least, why don't US citizens have the option to pay some percentage of their tax to NASA when they file their tax returns?
          • I'd have to say because unlike a toll for a tunnel or a bridge there is no practical way to distribute advantages of space research to only those who funded it... or are you suggesting that the sole application for space research is public nationalistic masturbation?
  • here [top.rbc.ru]

    In short, at 83rd second engine stopped working for unknown reason, and the whole thing is currently being intensively searched for. Probably Russian ICBMs are not so good for launching satellites after all.
    • Probably Russian ICBMs are not so good for launching satellites after all.

      Look on the bright side, maybe during the Cold War Russia actually attacked the United States a couple times but no one realized it since the warheads got lost along the way... :-)

  • Swords into Plowshares (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NardofDoom (821951) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:27PM (#12877416)
    "...atop a converted ICBM..."

    Just like some other craft we happen to know [startrek.com].

  • This is from Reuters, via CNN [cnn.com]:

    Tracking stations failed to pick up signals from an experimental solar-driven orbiter launched on Tuesday from a Russian submarine, raising the prospect the mission had failed.

    This includes stations in Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, the Marshall Islands, Alaska, the Czech Republic, and two stations outside Moscow.

    Hopefully it's a temporary problem, or just a miscalculated orbit.

    • Re:Possible bad news: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Engineer #1: A few hundred kilometers that way or this way wouldn't matter...
      Engineer #2: Miles
      Engineer #1: What do you mean "miles"?

      pwnd!
  • What would be really cool is if it came back online in a week or so, and was many hundreds of thousands of miles away already...

  • Of course they can't find it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by centauri (217890) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:36PM (#12877489) Homepage
    ... it must be halfway to Coruscant by now.
  • According to the official timeline the first high-quality ground station contact will be approximately Jun 22 04:23 UTC (Jun 21 21:23 PDT) - that is 8 h 37 m into the launch, i.e. it hasn't happened yet. I guess someone got a bit overly eager to report news or simply didn't have a clue or something similar in the time-honored Slashdot fashion...

    To quote from the official timeline (which I will not link to on Slashdot for obvious reasons):
    "First high-quality ground station contacts: Tarusa and Bear Lakes

  • Not looking good! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brett Buck (811747) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @08:04PM (#12877620)
    The report of data suddenly looking "noisy" about the time the final stage fired is a pretty classic bad news situation. The sequence is usually: "looking good!" "clean separation!" "5-4-3-2-1,kick motor ignition" data lost followed by, a short time later "radar indicates multiple targets..." Not that I am hoping, but it's a really bad sign. Brett
    • According to this [astronautix.com], all of the rocket's stages were powered by storable liquid fuel engines. So it should be immune to the inherent risks of a solid fuel kick motor. An engineer once told me that a certain percentage of kick motors just blow up, despite x-ray inspections and other tests.

  • Spaceflight now has the scoop (Score:5, Informative)

    by fname (199759) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @08:04PM (#12877621) Journal
    Spaceflight Now has posted a story [spaceflightnow.com] about the launch. The 1st stage failed after 83 seconds.

  • It's on mars.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by multipart/mixed (163409) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @08:04PM (#12877624)
    ...hanging out with the Vikings.

  • Of course they can't hear it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZSpade (812879) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @08:07PM (#12877639) Homepage
    It's in space!

  • Gotta be said. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cervantes (612861) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:43AM (#12878841) Journal
    I'll probably get modded down for this, but...

    The Project Operations Assistant.
    Let's review:
    Sexy foreign (to me) accent... check
    Geek... check
    Cute... check
    Knows how to blog... check
    Plays with models all day long ... check
    Gets to work with stuff that makes a REALLY BIG BOOM... check

    Can take a joke... we'll see. :)

  • developing story - craft detected (Score:3, Informative)

    by wronski (821189) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @01:59AM (#12879011)
    This is just in on http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/06/21/russia.co smos.reut/index.html/ [cnn.com]
    PASADENA, California (Reuters) -- Cosmos 1, the first solar sail-powered spacecraft, appears to be "alive" and sending signals to tracking stations but could be in a lower orbit than planned, said mission experts in California, late on Tuesday.
    Telemetry data received by three tracking stations in the Pacific Ocean, Russia and the Czech Republic seemed to show that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, mission staff at the Planetary Society said.
    Mission controllers discovered after reviewing telemetry data from the stations that the craft had signaled its passage during what had been believed to be several hours of radio silence, said Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray.
    "The good news is we have reason to believe it's alive and in orbit," Murray said. "The bad news is we don't know where it is."

    • Re:Interstellar (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Council (514577) <rmunroe@NoSPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:27PM (#12877424) Homepage
      I wonder how well this kind of propulsion will work in interestellar space where there is no solar wind, let alone enough protons from one direction.

      I think the theory is you get up to a pretty high speed by the time you leave the solar system, then coast. You'd better be sure you can stop at the right place, though.

      I'm sure people have figured that out. Obviously you run the process in reverse to slow down when you approach the star. But what if you can only shed half your speed by the time you get to the planet? (that is, if the other star is smaller, the planet further out, etc)?

      Anyone?
        • You never actually stop accelerating; it's just that as the photon flux thins out you reach a point beyond which the acceleration is so small that you may as well ignore it, even over long stretches of time. After all, we get a measurable amount of light from objects 14 billion light years away, and every one of those photons accelerates the object that absorbs it by a tiny amount. It's just not enough to feel and nobody's yet thought of any use for them other than imaging.

          Why bother to furl the sail? I
    • I wonder how well this kind of propulsion will work in interestellar space where there is no solar wind, let alone enough protons from one direction.

      Let's visualize someone on a bike. They stand at the top of a hill (solar radiation effect, closer to the sun, more there is). They peddle enough to get going (ion drive or solar sail). Then they pick up speed rapidly as they go down the hill.

      Once they reach the bottom of the hill, where there isn't enough material to push them they fold up the sail - or i
      • Solar sails are not intended to be propelled by solar wind, they are propelled by light. For interstellar voyages, you'd propel the solar sail actively (with a laser). That technology will also be tested as part of this experiment.
        • Read up on "interstellar space". There is a low density of hydrogen gas out there - it wasn't pulled in by the gravitational pull of the stars when they formed, and it wasn't pushed out by the solar wind when the star achieved fusion.

          So when you're craft is going at 200,000 mph, every little hydrogen atom is going to blow a chunk out of your craft and slow down your velocity. So it would make sense to reduce the surface area of your craft, in the direction that it is travelling.
          • A couple of minor comments here.

            There is a low density of hydrogen gas out there

            Yes, but it's not that low. Actually higher density than the bubble that the Solar system lives inside (as you say, solar wind clears the way). Solar wind is less denser than interstellar space, believe or not.

            it wasn't pushed out by the solar wind

            They were pushed out. It is just that the gas pressue of interstellar space is in equilibrium with the gas pressure of solar wind. Pushing didn't cease to exist all of sudden,
        • For an unfurled solar sail, resistance would be an issue in interstellar space. If you even hit only one speck of dust per mile, over tens of light-years it still adds up!
        • why is resistance not an issue an interstellar space?
          Because - resistance - is - futile. D'oh!

    • Re:Interstellar (Score:5, Informative)

      by cahiha (873942) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @08:00PM (#12877597)
      Solar sails aren't driven by solar wind or protons, they are driven by light (photons).

      An interstellar voyage might be possible, but would probably require a laser or microwave system aimed at the sail for much of its journey (a brief "push" like that is also being tested as part of this experiment).
    • Solar sails use photon pressure, aka light. Not having rtfm I suppose they could have intended to use the solar wind as well with this one, but light is what you'd use for intersteller distances.
      On idea that's been kicked around is to put a huge laser on the moon and shine it at a retreating solar sail to give it an extra push to bring it up to higher speeds faster. This has the advantage beign able to use a huge facility without taking it along. Of course you'd have to reverse the sail much sooner a
    • You made up an issue, just so you can rant about imperial measurement.
      what an ass.

      also, it's Reagans fault.

    • Re:Did they program it in miles again? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rei (128717) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @07:37PM (#12877493) Homepage
      Actually, I'm betting that this time it was due to a spelling error. The sub that launched the Volna rocket was the Borisoglebsk, The first receiving station was at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka penninsula. The temporary ground station to pick it up next was on Majuro. Then it will next contact Panska Ves in the Czech republic. It's not until the ground stations at the Tarusa and Bear Lakes that the spelling becomes sufferable. :)


    • You forgot one step:

      Lastly, the solar wind will shred the sails of this craft, as we have not yet developed a material light enough for solar sails, yet robust enough to withstand long-term exposure to the solar wind.

      Still perfectly valid for proof-of-concept, but a good long way from practical application.

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