Solar sail :P

[{MSX}]

This evening Planetary Society will launch the Cosmos1, a space craft thrusted by solar sail
Is this cool or what ?

The launch is scheduled for 19:46:09 UTC.

Let's hope it will make it..

[Robert Kosek]

You wanna reach the stars MSX? Good luck to them anyway, solar sails are a neat piece of technology.

Why are we looking for intellegent life in space, when we cannot even find it here on Earth?

[{MSX}]

too bad.. the mission went wrong.. :cry:
i was really hoping to see something new this night!
it's sure that it was a low cost private mission, maybe it was too low anyway..
They relied on old russian converted intercontinental ballistic missile.. I mean, that's not exacly the best one can hope for
In fact the problem was with the missile..
Bye bye to solar sails!

[BojZ]

That just sucked. I was hoping to see some sail action footage or at least to hear it worked =].

I hope they'll give it another go one of these days/years...

BojZ

[savage]

The rocket did not blow up, but it seems they lost contact.

[Sly]

They think they have heard some faint radio signals from the craft. At least, there were faint radio signals at the times they expected it to fly over certain receiving stations. They just have to work out what orbit it may have ended up in.

[BojZ]

So it's either some hope left or aliens preparing an major invasion. =]

BojZ

[Sly]

This is their latest update:

In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.

While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.

If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.

[BojZ]

My fingers are crossed...

[WILL]

For any mission to succeed to first need to fail many many times before to ensure it's proper success. They have learned more about solar sails from their faliure than if it was a success.