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Image Of The Day
NanoSail-D2
📖 3 min read 📊 beginner 🏷️ NASA APOD
In Brief
In 2011, on January 20, NASA's NanoSail-D2 unfurled a very thin and very reflective 10 square meter sail becoming the first solar sail spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Often considered the stuff of science fiction, sailing through space was suggested 400 years ago by astronomer Johannes Kepler, who ha...
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The Full Story
In 2011, on January 20, NASA's NanoSail-D2 unfurled a very thin and very reflective 10 square meter sail becoming the first solar sail spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Often considered the stuff of science fiction, sailing through space was suggested 400 years ago by astronomer Johannes Kepler, who had observed comet tails blown by the solar wind. But modern solar sail spacecraft designs, like NanoSail-D2, Japan's interplanetary spacecraft IKAROS, or the Planetary Society's Lightsail A, rely on th...
Key Takeaways
- 1 Important astronomical discovery
- 2 Advances our understanding
- 3 Future research potential
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How We Know This
Scientific observation and analysis
What This Means
Contributes to our knowledge of the universe
Why It Matters
Important advance in astronomy
Related Topics
#astronomy
#discovery