Engineers have long envisioned replacing heavy rocket fuels with a solar sail that would use the steady push of sunlight against an ultrathin, highly reflective surface (SN: 8/21/99, p. 120: http://new.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/8_21_99/bob1.htm). They’re getting closer to propelling a spacecraft in this way.
Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital trajectory, the Planetary Society of Pasadena, Calif.,
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