NASA is said to be testing a new design called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System which was deployed in orbit just a few days ago after flying on a Rocket Lab launch.
The deployed sails and booms are required to be as light as possible in order to be effective, according to IFL Science.
NASA has designed new composite materials that are not just lighter but also harder than previous approaches to solar sails for this new experiment.
“Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today’s small spacecraft. Solar sails need very large, stable, and lightweight booms that can fold down compactly,” Keats Wilkie, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Langley Research Center, said in a statement.
“This sail’s booms are tube-shaped and can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure into a small package while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes,” it added.
The fully deployed sails measure 80 square meters (860 square feet) which is also roughly the area of six parking spots.
“Seven meters of the deployable booms can roll up into a shape that fits in your hand,” said Alan Rhodes, the mission’s lead systems engineer at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “The hope is that the new technologies verified on this spacecraft will inspire others to use them in ways we haven’t even considered.”
