[Newsbot]

Title: 'Solar sail' spacecraft to launch in 2010
Category: Science
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2009-11-11 17:56:14

[GreenTiger]

A 100% efficient spaxwcraft thats neet.

[tritium]

How do you steer that thing away from planets that have high gravitational pull.

By the sound of it, its first mission failed and was pulled back to earth.

[FFed]

As a long time member of the Planetary Society, some of my cash has gone into this project. It is great to see if finally ready to go. The first launch did not fail because it was forced back to Earth because of Earths gravity, it failed due to rocket failure. A scheduled burn never occurred so it never reached orbit. Once it is underway, you can use the gravity from larger planets to increase speed like they do with other space probes. However I do not know if they will do that with the solar sail.