New Links and Changes to this Site

Added April 10, 2001

• I have added a few links to the Research and Articles and Documents sections of the Links page. Included are references to research by Esther Morrow and Allan McInnes, and web sites on solar sails by ILC Dover, Ward Vuillemot, Silicon Sky, and How Stuff Works. I have also added the How Solar Sails Will Work link to the Introduction to Solar Sailing page.

Added February 7, 2001

• Patricia Mulligan's email address has been updated.

Added January 4, 2001

• I have reformatted the source of all the pages on this site to validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict, as per the recommendation by the W3C.

• I have added a few more items from the News page to the Events and News section of the Web Links page.

Added February 8, 2000

• Geostorms web site has a new format without frames, so you can go directly to the Smallsats page.

• Solar Blade is a current project to develop a nanosatellite heliogyro.

• Living With a Star is a proposed program at Goddard Space Flight Center to study the sun, including the development of solar sails to enable certain missions.

Added June 28, 1999

• Interworld Transport now has their own domain, www.interworldtransport.com.

Added May 11, 1999

• A link has been added to the top of the starting page to view the site using CritSuite. This is a system that allows you to submit inline commentary into any web document without actually editing it. Critsuite was developed for the Foresight Institute's web enhancement project. (2/8/2000: This has been removed.)

Added April 9, 1999

• 3 Axis Stabilized Solar Sails has been reorganized and cleaned up some. I also made some minor content changes to Types of Solar Sails and Spin Stabilized Solar Sails.

Added April 5, 1999

• Sailing the Proton Winds on the Links now mentions the topic of the link, magnetic sails.

• Magnetic Sails and Starwisp are new items on the Links page to old documents that disappeared from their original site some time ago.

Added March 23, 1999

• Pictures from Inflatable Space Structures Demonstration has had some of the pictures rotated to proper orientation.

Added March 10, 1999

• I have made major changes to all of the web pages. I hope that the new arrangement, and in some cases content, is much clearer and easier to use. The old pages are available at: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~diedrich/solarsails-old/
  Please send me your feedback at: diedrich@ugcs.caltech.edu

Added February 16, 1999

• The Sky Over Berlin, February 1999, discusses using a solar sail for a fast pluto flyby towards the end of the page.

• Solar Sail Trajectories and Design research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering.

Added February 5, 1999

• I updated the circular sail web pages with new descriptions and graphics. The pictures are a bit more realistic, except that I haven't added backdrops with stars yet. Let me know what you think.

Added February 4, 1999

• Solar Sailing 101 is a new document I wrote to give a basic intro to solar sails. Please read it and let me know what's wrong with it.

Added February 3, 1999

• Colin R. McInnes has written the first textbook on solar sails called Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics and Mission Applications which will be available next month. For a preview, take a look at the table of contents and the cover.

Added January 22, 1999

• I made some changes to some of the pages. In particular, there is a new page on Configurations, and its sub-pages (3 Axis and Spin) have been updated. Please let me know what you think.

Added January 13, 1999

• The Way to Go in Space - A Scientific American article about options for launching into orbit and moving around space more economically. There is a detailed sidebar on light sails.

Added November 1, 1998

• Znamya-2.5 - The newest Russian space mirror, Znamya-2.5, was placed on the Russian Mir space station by a Progress M40 on October 25th. Follow the previous link for further details.

Added August 30, 1998

• Znamya - The Znamya experiment program by the Space Regatta Consortium and RSC Energia to develop large, thin film, deployable structures for solar sail propulsion and illumination of areas of the Earth at night.

Added August 17, 1998

• Solar Sails for the Operational Space Community by Patricia Mulligan. This Spaceviews article describes the current state of solar sails. In particular, recently conceived applications for very near-term low and moderate performance sails are discussed.

Added May 4, 1998

• Solar Polar Sail Mission Study - A new mission concept report from the JPL Space Physics Research Element. Provided as PDF and Postscript files.

Added March 27, 1998

• NASA Web Search Engine. NASA has set up a search engine that lets you search all of NASA's web pages. Try a search for "solar sail." The first couple pages of results are the most interesting.

• Third IAA International Conference on Low-Cost Planetary Missions Abstracts

  • Propulsion Trades for Space Science Missions
  • To the Sun and Pluto With Solar Sails and Micro-Sciencecraft
  • ODISSEE - A Proposal for Demonstration of a Solar Sail in Earth Orbit
  • New Millennium Mission Concepts for Deep Space-5

• Solar Sailing by Eric Drexler. A discussion about solar sails in general and high performance solar sails in particular.

Added January 26, 1998

• DLR Solar Sail Homepage. The solar sail homepage has been updated with information about their research activities. Included is information about the ODISEE demonstration mission, Mercury orbiter and asteroid rendezvous missions, and sail structure technology. There are also numerous pictures of solar sail spacecraft.

Added December 12, 1997

• GEOSTORMS. A mission to levitate a solar storm warning spacecraft closer to the sun than the sun-earth L1 point using a solar sail. Look under "Smallsats" and "GEOSTORMS."

Added December 2, 1997

• Solar Sail Project. This page describes a solar sail project currently underway at the Space Systems Dynamics Laboratory at Kyushu University in Japan. In Japanese.

Added May 14, 1997

• Solar and Laser Driven Lightsails. Alasdair Allan has set up a new version of his page. This page gives a very thorough description of the concepts of solar and laser sailing. The original can still be found at the Lunar Institute of Technology.

Added February 10, 1997

• Workshop on Solar Sail Propulsion. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is holding a workshop on solar sails Thursday, February 13th, 1997. I (Benjamin Diedrich) will be attending. I will be setting up a page about the workshop afterwards.

• Solar Sail Navigation School. This is an excellent Java applet available on the U3P solar sail web site which allows you to control a solar sail starting from an orbit near the Earth.

• Solar Sail Homepage. This is a new solar sail webpage currently under construction.

• Light Sails for Pre-Stellar Destinations. By Seth D. Potter and Gregory L. Matloff.

• Nickel Orbit by Bob Eggleton. A page to order a professional painting of a solar sail asteroid mining vessel.

Added January 7, 1997

• Earth to Orbit Transportation Bibliography. Entry 32, the MOON-EARTH MOMENTUM EXCHANGE, discusses using solar sails to transfer mass between the Earth and Moon. Included is a picture of an orbital sail fabrication machine.

Added January 6, 1997

• Proposed Methods of Interstellar Travel, including solar, laser, and microwave sails, as well as charged particle beam propelled magnetic sails. By Nathan Millard.

• Solar sail haiku by Dave Niedens.

• Leading Technologies: Ultra-High Efficiency Interplanetary Propulsion. NASA roadmap of leading technologies.

• Non-Chemical Rockets and Solar Sails. Discussion of different spacecraft propulsion methods, including radiation pressure on solar sails.

Added December 7, 1996

• Solar Sail Capability for Earth-Sun Synchronous Orbit. Table of sail areal density and distance for these orbits.

• Mercury Magnetospheric Explorer. Utilizes a solar sail to reduce flight time.

• Using a Solar Sail for a Plasma Storm Early Warning System. This plan uses a solar sail to provide levitation over the sun and active control to maintain a solar storm detection system closer to the sun than the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1). NOAA is examining implementing this mission in the near future.

• Lunar Solar Sail Race Notes - by members of the Artemis Society.

• Solar sail research by Takashi Tamura. Requires a Japanese capable web browser.

Added November 6, 1996

• Forever Bound Offers Unique Space Entertainment. Forever Bound is planning on sending a solar sail out of the solar system carrying human tissue from participants.

Added October 24, 1996

• JPL to Host Workshop on Inflatable Space Technology. Discussion included use of inflatable solar sail structures.

• Future Mission Concept NRA Results. The Solar Polar Sail Mission submitted by Marcia Neugebauer is one of 19 out of 70 mission plans selected by NASA for further study.

• Union for the Promotion of Photonic Propulsion (U3P) - general information on solar sails and U3P by Olivier Boisard. This page has recently been updated. It now contains many new images, Quicktime movies, VRML solar sail models, and technical reports.