Boffins are launching a spaceship that could help us to “sail” to Mars.
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3, is earmarked to blast off this week for flight tests in orbit.
The NASA mission will test a new way of navigating our solar system by using the propulsive power of sunlight. The ACS3 will launch aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand.
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Rocket Lab’s spacecraft will deploy the mission’s CubeSat about 600 miles above Earth - more than twice the altitude of the International Space Station.
To test the performance of the ACS3, it must be in a high enough orbit for the tiny force of sunlight on the sail – roughly equivalent to the weight of a paperclip resting on your palm – to overcome atmospheric drag and gain altitude.
After an initial flight phase lasting about two months and including subsystems checkout, the microwave oven-sized CubeSat will deploy its reflective solar sail.
The unfurled solar sail is approximately 30 feet long.
The weeks-long test consists of a series of manoeuvres to demonstrate orbit raising and lowering, using only the pressure of sunlight acting on the sail.
NASA says the ACS3 “sets out to prove its ability to sail across space, increasing access and enabling low-cost missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.”
This comes after NASA announced the revised launch date for its mission to one of Saturn’s moons in a quest to discover more about the genesis of life.
The space agency confirmed its Dragonfly drone mission to the planet’s largest moon Titan is set to launch in July 2028.
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