NASA has selected a fascinating new project for further development, known as the Diffractive Solar Sail. By bending light before it hits the sail, this device could propel spacecraft more efficiently ...

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 ...

Plastic pollution is one of the most serious problems affecting the world’s oceans. If current trends continue, plastic pollution is expected to outweigh all fish in the sea by 2050. Finding a ...

NASA on Tuesday said it's investing $2 million over two years to advance the development of a new solar sail concept called diffractive lightsailing. With diffractive lightsails, NASA could ...

The B.Neos combines a sleek, sailing yacht-inspired design with a fully livable, homey interior and an innovative hybrid propulsion ...

An artist’s conception of the Starshot Lightsail spacecraft during acceleration by a ground-based laser array. Previous conceptions of lightsails have imagined them being passively pushed by light ...

Cargo vessels account for nearly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, underscoring a need for energy-efficient solutions. WISAMO from Michelin is a new automated wing sail design that harnesses the ...

The feasibility of the concept was previously studied under NIAC’s Phase I and Phase II awards, led by Professor Grover Swartzlander from RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, who ...

Testing has started at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on a concept for a potentially revolutionary propulsion system that could send spacecraft to the edge of our solar ...

Astronomers have been waiting decades for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to peer farther into space than ever before. But if humans want to actually reach our nearest ...