Ribbon Structure Free Solar Sail
by Brian Wang from NextBigFuture.com on (#6ZJFV)
The ribbon solar sail will be a solar sail design using a thin film strip embedded with diffractive gratings. It is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project. This configuration leverages diffraction to cancel out normal photonic pressure components, allowing thrust to align along the ribbon's length when oriented at a tilt to incoming sunlight. ...