Projects: Space Information
The Planetary Report
Volume XXIX, Number 6, November/December 2009
Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble SM4 ERO Team |
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.
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
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