World's first interplanetary solar sail spacecraft IKAROS, sail spreading CG image

[Neosaigo]

Earth's own UFO

[sweetsongman1]

YAY WE GOT THE SAIL OUT IN AN EPIC WAY...now what?

[CyphenPhsyX]

@sweetsongman1

"One small step for man, One giant leap for man kind"

Remember those words Son ;)

[foomboom2]

@sweetsongman1

We conquer Beta Centauri!

[kurokuro4792]

くるくるくるくる～～～　ぱっ！

[supertrinko]

attach a large circular (400m diameter) spacecraft to the rear, spinning at roughly 2rpm, and you've got a low power requirement spacecraft with artificial gravity!

[Bossofsardine]

Ikaros successfully did first set sails and second sail sails. Now, the time to do the sailing space... haha

[kamak894]

Oh wow - listening to this with the vuvuzelas on gives it a real 2001: A Space Oddessy feel to it...

[marcusklaas]

Good lord, that is awesome.

[kamak894]

Yeah, they should launch the solar sail for as far as it can go - which is to the edges of the galaxy, I presume.

[ShakespeareAvenue]

how fast will this thing go? is there any actual video footage?

[AnarchyAlleyCat]

@ShakespeareAvenue

given enough time, you can accelerate it near the speed of light

[noxure]

@AnarchyAlleyCat That's only theoretically when it's propelled by a perfect laser.

The thrust generated by the sun decreases exponentially the further away.

"thrust spacecraft = thrust from the entire sun / (surface sail / 4pi*distance to core²)"

Cosmic radiation, coming from all directions, will overpower the sun at some point. Also, theres that weird theory of relativity that will demand more power for less acceleration at extremely high speeds.

[noxure]

@AnarchyAlleyCat oops, off course I ment (surface sail/4pi*distance to core²) / thrust from the entire sun.  /:D

[Balthasar007]

Wow... that thing looks like a shuriken at 00:45

[dojimandesu]

This spacecraft will navigate to Jupiter taking 6 month using by

photon from Sun like wind.　It is approx. 20 meters in diameter

JAXA is developing now more huge one.

[dojimandesu]

It's tomorrow.　6:58:22 on Japan Standard Time.

Exiting! If it succeeded, it gonna be the first record of Humankind.

[gordon1201]

Has it already been launched?? Can barely find any information about it let alone footage!

[kaploy9]

If this was used for manned space missions...

Astronaut: "Auggh!... Just... stop... spinning! *hurk* ..I think I'm gonna be sick..."

(of course, that would give them an even better reason to crank-up the g-force training) ;D

[OMBRIEL]

Génial !