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one of the the main targets for this

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demonstration is we're going to

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demonstrate navigation demonstrate

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capable navigation solar sails have been

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used before and they've flown before but

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what we offer is something that a

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mission planner could then pick off a

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shelf and he say that's a technology

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that would work for flying my instrument

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right the solar sails have only that it

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flown before I've only been you know to

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demonstrate the concept of solar thrust

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and solar propulsion but what we what

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we're aiming to do is take that next

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step and go into navigation and actually

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fly to someplace useful that only a

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solar sail can do we have a radiation

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pressure and then we have solar wind

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what we're going to use is the radiation

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pressure this is a phenomenon in which a

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photon which is massless but still has

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momentum reacts with the surface and

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bounces back off it creates a very tiny

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tiny pressure but it is a pressure

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nonetheless and once we're in the the

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weightlessness of space any pressure

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will turn into you know turn into a

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force and F equals MA will get a small

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acceleration so what the solar sail

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consists of is a great giant area of

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reflective material that's capturing all

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of that solar pressure and using it to

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impart an acceleration on a small craft

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so what we're targeting for this program

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is a solar sail with an area of roughly

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1,200 square meters so we're in the

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neighborhood of about a quarter of a

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football field if you will with that

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will create roughly 1 gram of thrust so

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it's it's very low right it's equivalent

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to the weight of a pink sweet and low

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sugar packet but what we can do with

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that is if we're careful we can

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integrate that thrust over a very long

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period of time and we can do some useful

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the solar flares from the Sun obviously

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wreak havoc or can wreak havoc on

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satellites and even the power grid on

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the earth so what NOAA offers to

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operators and to the power grid

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operators is advanced warning through

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the means of this satellite that they

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have positioned at l1 which is a

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Lagrangian in between Earth and the Sun

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they offer this advanced warning as a

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result of the data they get from this

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satellite called ace now that's at l1

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now what the solar sail could offer and

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this is one of the areas that we want to

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we want to fly to is that we could

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create a pseudo LeBrons point that's

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farther in towards the Sun than l1 we'd

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actually double the distance from the

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earth as aces so if they have X minutes

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of warning time from Ace we could double

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that and we could offer you know offer

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satellite operators and power grid

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operators twice the warning time the

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LaGrant exists because this earth is

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pulling on if the Sun is pulling on it

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and there's some centripetal force

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that's you know swinging out away from

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the Sun too so it's the it's the

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amalgamation of those three forces that

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create that gravitationally neutral

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point now we're going to offset some of

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that sun's gravity with that one gram of

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thrust and we can fly a little closer to

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the Sun and create that extra neutral

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point there and we'll be a little

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farther in we last built a solar sail

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the one that was deployed in the phone

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book chamber there in 2004-2005 is when

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we assembled it I think the test was in

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2005 so our first goal is to to

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revitalize that this is no no mean feat

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to create something that gossamer and

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controllably deploy it our flight right

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now we're scheduling somewhere in the

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the fourth quarter of 2014 now the

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flight is supposed to be on a secondary

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Falcon 9 GTO launch hopefully Falcon I

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did query the tower you know we would

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take any other secondary flight we can

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get but the the GTO launch offers us