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In 2017, professor Espen gardar hog came up with a new mathematical theory. He claimed that it’s actually possible to create a space craft that with the help of photons can accelerate to 99.999% of the speed light. but we want to set a space craft in motion with photons we need a new type of engine one that can convert light into energy.
The best way to make this a reality is with a solar sail. To make 1 kg of matter reach the speed of light, a sail is needed with an area of about 100,000 square meters that gives us an acceleration of roughly 1 m/s. This means if our engineer weighs 70 kg, they’d have to design a square sail with sides longer than 2.1/2 km, which is like 25 football fields laid end to end.
That’s not even counting the weight of the spacecraft itself, but lucky for us, there is no worrying about designing a fuel tank since we’ve got a free and endless source of energy (the sun). The beginning of the solar sail journey might be pretty sluggish, but the acceleration will be constant, and thanks to the sun, we can keep it going for years, even decades.
After about 100 days of operation, the solar sail can reach a speed of around 14,000 KMPH. After 3 years, its speed will hit 240,000 KMPH per hour, and it will take only 5 years to arrive at Pluto, which is the most distant object in the solar system. This idea of constant acceleration has prompted several research groups in recent years to test increasingly advanced prototypes of photo engines.
In 2015, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency sent the light into orbit. Scientists managed to set up a solar sail with an area of 32 square meters on this small satellite. Within a month, the spacecraft weighing 315 kg had its speed increase by approximately 10 m/s.
The first successful experiment with a solar sail, though it also shed light on its limitations as the manoeuvrability of the design was quite low to optimize the interaction of the photon engine with light particles, Nasa is developing what they call a diffractive solar sail. A diffractive sailing project uses small optical gradings embedded in the sails to make better use of sunlight.
ARNOLD