Reaching for the Stars: Using Light to Sail through Space

he word “liftoff” will come up a lot between now and the end of September. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is slated to launch Aug. 30, followed by a Roscosmos Progress resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), targeted for Sept. 9. Then, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, which rotate the ISS crew, is scheduled to launch no earlier than Sept. 12.

At the School of Engineering and Applied Science, mechanical engineer Igor Bargatin‘s lab has spent the last decade building toward its own launches. A few weeks ago, the team proposed a new light sail prototype, an ultrathin, hexagon-patterned film that reflects more than half the laser light hitting it while absorbing almost none. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.

Artist rendering of Breakthrough Starshot’s proof of concept for ultra-fast, light-driven nanocrafts, which lays the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to astronomy, including solar system exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.
(Image: Breakthrough Starshot)

It’s the latest and most concrete step in an idea he’s chased for years: using light alone to hurl objects through space, at scales from a few square inches to interstellar distances.

This story was written by Nathi Magubane for Penn Today.