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Solar Sailing
Solar sails (also known as lightsails, light sails, and photon sails) are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigation have been proposed since the 1980s. The two spacecraft to successfully use the technology for propulsion were IKAROS, launched in 2010, and LightSail-2, launched in 2019. A useful analogy to solar sailing may be a sailboat, sailing boat; the light exerting a force on the large surface is akin to a sail being blown by the wind. High-energy Laser propulsion, laser beams could be used as an alternative light source to exert much greater force than would be possible using sunlight, a concept known as beam sailing. Solar sail craft offer the possibility of low-cost operations combined with high speeds (relative to chemical rockets) and long operating lifetimes. Since they have few moving parts and use no propellant, they can potentially be us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IKAROS Solar Sail
IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) experimental spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched on 20 May 2010, aboard an H-IIA rocket, together with the Akatsuki (spacecraft), ''Akatsuki'' (Venus Climate Orbiter) probe and four other small spacecraft. IKAROS is the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar sail technology in interplanetary space. The craft's name is an allusion to the legendary Icarus (, ''Ikaros''), who flew close to the Sun on wings made of bird-feathers and wax. On 8 December 2010, IKAROS flew by Venus at a distance of , successfully completing its planned mission, and entered its extended operation phase. Its last transmission was received in 2015. The operation was terminated officially on 15 May 2025. Purpose The IKAROS probe is the world's first spacecraft to use solar sailing as the main propulsion. It was designed to demonstrate four key technologies (comments in paren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma surrounding the nucleus, and sometimes a Comet tail, tail of gas and dust gas blown out from the coma. These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the outstreaming solar wind plasma acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. The coma may be up to 15 times Earth's diameter, while the tail may stretch beyond one astronomical unit. If sufficiently close and bright, a comet may be seen from Earth without the aid of a telescope and can Subtended angle, subtend an arc of up to 30° (60 Moons) across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures and religion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
JBS Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-born scientist who later moved to India and acquired Indian citizenship. He worked in the fields of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field, he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute until his death in 1964. Haldane's article on abiogenesis in 1929 introduced the "primordial soup theory", which became the foundation for the concept of the chemical origin of life. He established human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome, and codified Haldane's rule on sterility in the heterogametic sex of hyb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Zander
Georg Arthur Constantin Friedrich Zander (also Tsander, , Romanization of Russian, tr. ; , – 28 March 1933), was a Baltic German pioneer of rocketry and spaceflight in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. He designed the first liquid rocket, liquid-fueled rocket to be launched in the Soviet Union, GIRD-X, and made many important theoretical contributions to the road to space. Biography Zander was born in Riga, Russian Empire, into a Baltic German commoner family. His father Arthur Georg Zander was a doctor, but Friedrich Zander was fascinated by other natural sciences. Zander was enrolled in the Riga urban technical high school in 1898, for a seven-year program in which he was a top student. During this time, he became acquainted with the work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and space travel became his foremost scientific passion. While studying engineering at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, he carried out trajectory calculations for a flight to Mars. Mars held a special fascina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA STI Program
The Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collects, organizes, preserves, and releases the Agency's scientific and technical information. STI is derived from NASA's research and development efforts and NASA projects, programs, and missions. The program is essential in helping NASA avoid duplication of research, by sharing information to ensure that the U.S. maintains its preeminence in aerospace-related industries and education. Examples of NASA STI include technical papers and reports, contractor reports, conference papers and proceedings, journal articles, presentations, and technical information on websites. NASA STI also includes research information from NASA's predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which dates back to 1915 and transitioned to NASA at the advent of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (Amended). Program Management The STI Program Office is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (; rus, Константин Эдуардович Циолковский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin ɪdʊˈardəvʲɪtɕ tsɨɐlˈkofskʲɪj, a=Ru-Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.oga; – 19 September 1935) was a Russian rocket scientist who pioneered astronautics. Along with Hermann Oberth and Robert H. Goddard, he is one of the pioneers of space flight and the founding father of modern rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired Wernher von Braun and leading Soviet rocket engineering, rocket engineers Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program. Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, his unusual habits made him seem bizarre to his fellow townsfolk. Early life Tsiolkovsky was born in (now in Spassky District, Ryazan Oblast), in the Russian Empire, to a middle-class family. His father, Makary Edward Er ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panspermia
Panspermia () is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms,Forward planetary contamination like '' Tersicoccus phoenicis'', that has shown resistance to methods usually used in spacecraft assembly clean rooms: known as directed panspermia. The theory argues that life did not originate on Earth, but instead evolved somewhere else and seeded life as we know it. Panspermia comes in many forms, such as radiopanspermia, lithopanspermia, and directed panspermia. Regardless of its form, the theories generally propose that microbes able to survive in outer space (such as certain types of bacteria or plant spores) can become trapped in debris ejected into space after collisions between planets and small solar system bodies that harbor life. This debris containing the lifeforms is then transported by meteors between bod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svante Arrhenius
Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Swedish scientist. Originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. In 1903, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first Sweden, Swedish Nobel laureate. In 1905, he became the director of the Nobel Institute, where he remained until his death."Arrhenius, Svante August" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 635. Arrhenius was the first to use the principles of physical chemistry to estimate the extent to which increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide are responsible for the Earth's increasing surface temperature. His work played an important role in the emergence of modern climatology, climate science. In the 1960s, Charles David Keeling reliably measured the level of carbon dioxide present in the air showing it was increasing and that, according to the g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nichols Radiometer
A Nichols radiometer was the apparatus used by Ernest Fox Nichols and Gordon Ferrie Hull in 1901 for the measurement of radiation pressure. It consisted of a pair of small silvered glass mirrors suspended in the manner of a torsion balance by a fine quartz fibre within an enclosure in which the air pressure could be regulated. The torsion head to which the fiber was attached could be turned from the outside using a magnet. A beam of light was directed first on one mirror and then on the other, and the opposite deflections observed with mirror and scale. By turning the mirror system around to receive the light on the unsilvered side, the influence of the air in the enclosure could be ascertained. This influence was found to be of almost negligible value at an air pressure of about . The radiant energy of the incident beam was deduced from its heating effect upon a small blackened silver disk, which was found to be more reliable than the bolometer when it was first used. With ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyotr Lebedev
Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev (; 24 February 1866 – 1 March 1912) was a Russian physicist. His name was also transliterated as Peter Lebedew and Peter Lebedev. Lebedev was the creator of the first scientific school in Russia. Career Lebedev made his doctoral degree in Strasbourg under the supervision of August Kundt in 1887–1891. In 1891, he started working in Moscow State University in the group of Alexander Stoletov. There he made his famous experimental studies of electromagnetic waves. Along with Indian physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose he was one of the first to investigate millimeter waves, generating 50 GHz (6 mm) microwaves beginning in 1895 with a spark oscillator made of two platinum cylinders 1.5 cm long and 0.5 diameter immersed in kerosene at the focus of a parabolic reflector, and detecting the waves with an iron- constantan thermocouple detector.A. A. Kostenko, A. I. Nosich, P. F. Goldsmith, "Historical background and development of Soviet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraordinaires'', a series of bestselling adventure novels including ''Journey to the Center of the Earth'' (1864), ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (1870), and ''Around the World in Eighty Days'' (1872). His novels are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account contemporary scientific knowledge and the technological advances of the time. In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs, and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games. Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maxwell's Equations
Maxwell's equations, or Maxwell–Heaviside equations, are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, Electrical network, electric and Magnetic circuit, magnetic circuits. The equations provide a mathematical model for electric, optical, and radio technologies, such as power generation, electric motors, wireless communication, lenses, radar, etc. They describe how electric field, electric and magnetic fields are generated by electric charge, charges, electric current, currents, and changes of the fields.''Electric'' and ''magnetic'' fields, according to the theory of relativity, are the components of a single electromagnetic field. The equations are named after the physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who, in 1861 and 1862, published an early form of the equations that included the Lorentz force law. Maxwell first used the equations to propose that ligh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
