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The U.S. space Agency plans in 2014 to launch the largest for all history of the solar sail, covers an area of 1200 square meters. With the approval of the heirs of Arthur C. Clarke, the famous writer, developers named their project Sunjammer that literally means "viimastel of the Sun". Registered such name is written in 1964 story about Clark races on "sun boats".
The development of the sails, the length of which is equal to 38 meters, the company does L Garde. In the Arsenal of the company, send in 1996 experimental inflatable antenna to the ISS. In 2013, the project must go through a formal assessment of NASA and several tests on the Earth. In orbit, the sail will take launch vehicle Falcon 9. As the authors, the device is capable of moving away from Earth at a distance of eight times the distance from earth to the moon (approximately 3 million kilometers)
According to NASA, eco-friendly solar sails have a promising future. They can be used for monitoring of space climate and study of asteroids. It is possible that over time, the solar sail will be used for interstellar flights.
Material for the sails will be Kapton etc - polyimide film, created by DuPont and used, for example, flexible electronics and the astronauts ' spacesuits. Especially for mission DuPont will produce fabric made of Kapton etc thickness of only five micron, so that when folded, the sail will weigh about 32 kilograms.
In addition, DuPont will take away into space dust Creator of “Star trek” (Star Trek) Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel, as well as other clients of the company Celestis, since 1997 engaged in the memorial space flights.
NASA believes that a sustainable solar sail will be useful for the monitoring of space weather and the study of asteroids in the vicinity of the Earth, and in the future, probably, for interstellar flights. The first in the history “sailboat” in June 2010 was a Japanese probe “Ikar” (Ikaros), and in November of the same year, the US launched its own NanoSail-D with a sail area of only 9.3 per square meter.