Voyager 2 passed by Uranus in 1982, as close as no spacecraft has since, and continues to travel through interstellar space, 46 years after launch, now about 133 AU (about 19.9 billion km) from Earth.Although the Voyager vehicles continue their way through deep space, very few satellite missions like this have been carried out in recent years. The main reason for this is of course cost, but the only insurmountable obstacle is on the table and it is not going anywhere: Time. The design for such long journeys takes years to calculate, and a spacecraft takes about ten years to plan and build. Considering the time a satellite would need to reach distant targets, our next look at the stars probably won’t be anytime soon. But scientists are working on a new method of travel that could get us to the stars faster and cheaper.
Fast travel requires sails
In an article published in arXiv, the team led by Slava Turyshev of the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which launched the Voyager satellites in 1977, wants to incorporate solar-powered space energy to send miniature satellite units to their destinations quickly and cheaply.This technology, referred to as the solar sail, is essentially a process in which the pressure generated by the solar radiation is used as the driving force. The researchers explain: “Solar sails obtain propulsion by using highly reflective and lightweight materials that reflect sunlight to propel a spacecraft through space. The constant photon pressure from the sun is used by traditional onboard chemical and electrical propulsion systems that limit mission life and observation positions. It provides propulsion, eliminating the need for heavy, expendable propellants.”
Probes can be shipped in a few years
Scientists say sails are much less expensive than the heavy equipment currently used for propulsion, and the sustained photon pressure from the Sun provides propulsion for a wide variety of vehicle maneuvers, such as hovering or rapid orbital changes. The report highlights that significant progress has been made in the last decade in the field of solar sails and miniaturization. The success achieved with LightSail 2 is also seen as a flaming spirit for this goal. It should be noted that NASA also invested in solar sails. Thanks to the findings and knowledge gained, scientists predict that in the next few years, farther planets will be searched with very fast Solar sail space probes. With the scaling of technology, the sails that carry people and spacecrafts may be the key to interplanetary human travel.
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