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30th Anniversary of The Planetary Society
  

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The cover of Volume Volume XXIX, Number Number 6
On the Cover: Within the southern constellation Carina, located 7,500 light-years away, is a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina nebula. There looms this three-light-year-long pillar cloud of dense material, which is shaped by its interaction with radiation from stars both in and outside it. Radiation from exterior stars is disrupting the outer parts of the cloud, producing filamentary green and blue colors. The radiation is also compressing the cloud, inducing star birth. This image was taken in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope's new Wide Field Camera (WFC3). For an infrared view of the same object, see page 12. Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble SM4 ERO Team

From the Editor

The solar sail is back! We're aiming to launch before the end of next year. We are truly excited, and not just because it's cool technology -- although it undoubtedly is beyond cool -- but also because of the great things solar sails can make possible. We have always talked of interstellar voyages, and, with our new LightSail project, we're also addressing the eminently practical.

For example, consider your own electronically connected world. What would happen if the power grid went down, not just for hours but for days or even weeks? It might happen. Coronal mass ejections from the Sun could trigger massive geomagnetic storms capable of crippling electricity-dependent nations.

This is not the overwritten plot of a Hollywood movie. The National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies recently warned that severe space weather could affect -- in very nasty ways—our lives on Earth.

How can solar sailing address this? It could be the ideal technology to place solar weather stations between Earth and the Sun to give us enough warning to shut down transformers and save the grids.

But can solar sails do it? To test them out, our LightSail-3 will travel toward Lagrangian point 1, between our planet and its star, where a solar sail could someday keep a weather station in position and provide the needed warning time.

How's that for a practical use of Planetary Society Members' donations?

Still, although practicality is good, we all need a little romance in our lives, and solar sailing provides that as well. Want to see what life is like around Alpha Centauri? There's only one way to get there . . . and our LightSail project is taking the crucial first step.

--Charlene M. Anderson

Features

Lightsail: A New Way and a New Chance to Fly on Light
by Louis D. Friedman

2009 -- The Year in Pictures
by Emily Stewart Lakdawalla

We Make It Happen! Wrapping Up 2009
by Bruce Betts

Questions and Answers
Society News
Members' Dialogue