The ribbon solar sail will be a solar sail design using a thin film strip embedded with diffractive gratings. It is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project. This configuration leverages ...

Now that its reflective sail has deployed fully open in orbit, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System can be seen in the night sky from many locations across the world! Can you spot the solar sail?

Spirals of solar wind can spin off larger solar eruptions and disrupt Earth's magnetic field, yet they are too difficult to detect with our current single-location warning system, according to a new ...

A microwave-sized spacecraft with large silver wings is tumbling in orbit as engineers work to fix a glitch that’s causing it to lose orientation. After deploying four composite booms on board the ...

For most spacecraft, traveling through the vacuum of space requires fuel. NASA's experimental Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) is different, though. This vehicle could help NASA learn how ...

If humankind ever travels to distant stars, we might sail there — and it might be sooner than you think. Some of humanity's oldest ships used sails to harness the power of the wind, so it seems ...