Cosmos 1

Cosmos 1 was a project by The Planetary Society to test a solar sail in space. As part of the project, an unmanned solar sail spacecraft was launched into space at 15:46:09 EDT (19:46:09 UTC) on June 21, 2005, from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea. However, a rocket failure prevented it from reaching its intended orbit. Once in orbit, the spacecraft was supposed to deploy a large sail, upon which photons from the Sun would push, thereby increasing the spacecraft's velocity (the contributions from the solar wind are similar, but of much smaller magnitude).

Related Topics:
Planetary Society - Solar sail - EDT - UTC - June 21 - 2005 - Borisoglebsk - Barents Sea - Photon - Sun - Solar wind

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Had the mission been successful, it would have been the first-ever orbital use of a solar sail to speed up a spacecraft, as well as the first space mission by a space advocacy group. The project budget was USD $4 million.

Related Topics:
Space advocacy group - USD

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