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The Cosmos 1 mission, which is to be the first to use a solar sail, is on track for launch later this year after passing its sail deployment tests in Russia. The mission is a joint venture between the Planetary Society and the Cosmos Studios and is specifically designed to test solar sail technologies. The deployment of the 50-feet sail blade, which will unfold from the spacecraft once in Earth orbit, was tested in a vacuum chamber at the NPO Lavochkin factory and proceeded according to plan. The spacecraft will have eight sail blades, arranged in a circular pattern, with a diameter of 100 feet and will propel the spacecraft by catching the solar wind - an energetic stream of particles emanating from the Sun. Testing of the electronics of the Cosmos 1 craft, in preparation for launch, will take place at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences by the end of the summer.
Solar sails are just one of the technologies that have been suggested as a means of changing the course of an asteroid. Because they use the solar wind to generate thrust they are highly efficient and thus could be used to gradually alter the orbit of an object over a long period of time. NEO searches and orbital calculations can be used to predict potential impacts many hundreds of years in advance and thus propulsion systems, such as solar sails, which produce only small amounts of thrust could be of used to divert asteroids. Solar sails may also prove valuable in interplanetary transport of spacecraft but are as yet only a hypothetical possibility. Cosmos 1 will provide the first test of solar sail technologies in space.
More info: The Planetary Society
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