Traveling the vast distances between solar systems is well beyond existing technology. But a new ultra-thin lightsail designed with AI could make it possible to reach the nearest star within 20 years.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Interstellar travel has long been a dream, but getting to the stars is incredibly difficult. A new project is bringing the space ...

Washington, D.C. –“We’re back!” said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. “With an even more ambitious solar sail program than our last venture.” The Planetary Society today ...

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 is a winner of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair for testing the feasibility of using photons from the Sun as a form of propulsion for satellites. Can solar sailing ...

Can lightsails be the future of deep space exploration? This is what a recent study published in Nature Photonics hopes to address as a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology ...

Powered by laser light, this tiny sail lays the groundwork for future advances in lightsail technology and the potential for interstellar propulsion. Reading time 3 minutes A team of researchers at ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

The Planetary Society today announced the first of its LightSail spacecraft will embark on a May 2015 test flight. Funded entirely by private citizens, the solar sail satellite will hitch a ride to ...

A solar sailing spacecraft has lost touch with Earth for the second time, shortly after deploying its solar panels. LightSail fell silent "less than a day after completing what appeared to be a ...

A solar-sailing spacecraft has beamed a photo of its deployed sail back to Earth, confirming that it successfully completed the main objective of its mission. The LightSail spacecraft, a project of ...

Bill Nye the Science Guy's foray into solar sail propulsion is likely to come crashing back to Earth thanks to a software error. The craft launched on the 20th of May ...

Bill Nye's solar particle-powered spacecraft, LightSail, has lost communication with Earth. The spacecraft launched a week ago, but a software glitch has removed the craft's ability to send data back ...