Huntsville - Plans for an antenna system that converts beamed microwave energy into electricity at power levels ten thousand times higher than previously possible will be presented here tomorrow by its Canadian inventor.ĭr. New 'Rectenna' Makes Possible Higher-Energy Microwave Beams Made from lightweight layers of aluminized mylar, the sail will allow a craft to be propelled from low orbit to high orbit and ultimately into interplanetary space, driven by microwave energy, similar to the way wind pushes a sailboat across the sea. The Benfords developed the sail with researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 6, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Benford will give details on the unique project at the First International Symposium on Beamed-Energy Propulsion (ISBEP) Wednesday, Nov. UC Irvine physicist Gregory Benford will announce plans for the first known attempt to push a spacecraft into the Earth's orbit with energy beamed up from the ground. The satellite will be called the Cosmos Sail, the first solar-sail craft to orbit Earth. mission will take place next spring, commencing with the satellite launching from a Russian submarine off the coast of St.

Within ∼5 years, the sailcraft flies beyond Pluto, giving high velocity mapping of the outer solar system, the heliopause and interstellar medium.Special Cosmos Sail Uses Earth-Bound Energy To Assist Ascent

These missions make a close pass near the Sun, hence the name, to take advantage of high temperature characteristics of the sail by using the large solar flux at perihelion, yielding high velocities of ∼50 km/s for >40 A.U. Sublimation and desorption work well with the new carbon sail materials which can take very high temperatures (>2000 K), can use promising new materials for mass loss, and promise new classes of missions. In addition, we describe a mission scenario called ‘Sun‐Diver’ using a powerful microwave beam on a solar‐driven sail, to both heat and push the sail, accelerating by “boil‐off” of coated materials. The 450 kW microwave beam from the large 70‐m dish can show direct microwave beam acceleration of the sail by photon pressure, and we can measure that acceleration by on‐board accelerometer telemetry. This can demonstrate, for the first time, beamed propulsion of a sail in space. We are planning an experiment to irradiate the sail with the Deep Space Network beam from Goldstone. Next year the Planetary Society plans to launch Cosmos‐1, the first solar sail.

Cosmo gregory benford