At best, the sail would only be able to carry a tiny ... Unlike other seemingly sci-f tech, like ion thrusters, these laser propulsion methods are still quite a ways off being fielded in real ...

Interestingly, the spacecraft would use an innovative propulsion method ... the incredibly subtle movements of the sail as it ...

To that end, a long-term objective from Lubin and his team is to develop "wafer-scale spacecrafts" that would only weigh a few grams each, complete with a small laser sail for propulsion and long ...

Philip Lubin has led a team at UCSB to create laser arrays for propulsion and asteroid deflection ... a wafer-scale spacecraft with a 1 meter laser sail to about 26% of the speed of light in about 10 ...

Laser sailing could be a game changer for exploration ... numerous experiments have shown that "solar sails" can rely on sunlight for propulsion if the spacecraft is light enough and has a ...

As a major propulsion system it would still seem to have issues maintaining targeting between the two mirrors. Robert forward originally proposed the laser sail concept Robert Forward first proposed ...

Fabricating a sail with billions of nanoscale perforations ... improvement over the distances previously achieved using laser propulsion. Should this technology scale as anticipated, its ...

rather than having to carry their own propulsion systems and fuel. One current plan is to use the photon pressure from a laser to accelerate a gramme-sized spacecraft with a light sail to a ...

laser or microwave sail. An interstellar craft that surfed on the sun's photons or on a beam shot from Earth orbit wouldn't have to carry a propulsion source with it. But to propel a large probe ...

Figure 1: Measurement apparatus and schematics of light-induced propulsion and rotation of graphene sponge. Figure 2: Relationships between laser-induced propulsion/rotation of graphene sponge and ...