On Dec. 6 NASA reported that it successfully ejected its first nanosatellite from a microsatellite. The NanoSail-D, which also was the first solar sail NASA successfully launched into space. However, as of Dec. 10, the agency reported that it was not clear if the solar sail or the NanoSail-D successfully deployed.

The NanoSail-D nanosatellite is roughly the size of a loaf of bread when packed. The 100-square foot sail was designed to deploy from the small satellite in a matter of seconds. The device is NASA’s second attempt at deploying a solar-sail device in space. A previous attempt in 2008 failed when the launch vehicle failed.

The solar sail is being considered as a low-cost means of removing space debris from orbit, said NASA spokesperson Kimberly Newton. But it is not operating like the solar sail on the IKAROS satellite that Japan launched earlier this year. Rather the NanoSail-D satellite will use the sun for some propulsion but will also be impacted by the earth’s atmosphere, said Newton. At this point, she added, NASA was working to communicate with the nanosatellite.

Solar sails utilize the stream of photons from stars to provide propulsion, said Alhorn.

“What happens is that all the momentum of the photons is reflected back,” he said. “We’re are basically just taking the sunlight and using it for propulsion.”

Solar sails theoretically can make a vehicle or device move very fast, up to about 40 percent of the speed of light, Alhorn said.

“The best way to put it is to look at the Voyager,” he said. “It took about 30 years to get where it’s at. We believe a solar sail could do that in about 10 years.”

You wouldn’t want to use a solar sail in a drag race, however. Alhorn said the speed at which a solar sail provides propulsion is very slow.

“Over time, you get them to where they go very fast,” he said. That’s unlike a chemical propellant, which can provide short-term quick bursts of propulsion.

The IKAROS project also uses electrochromatic shading capabilities to provide directional thrust for the satellite.

“Their sale is high-tech and way out there,” said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator and aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Center.

He said the shading allows part of the sail to go dark, effectively reducing the amount of propulsion on that part of the sail and providing direction for the craft.

Meanwhile, Alhorn is working on the Feathersail project.

“We are trying to use the sails themselves to steer the space craft,” he said. The Feathersail has some minimal moving parts, he said, and it doesn’t take more than about 5 degrees of twist or rotation to manipulate the direction of the craft.

With solar sails you have roughly an infinite amount of energy when you have sunlight to propel them, he said. Which means the fastest satellite ever made will most likely be a solar-sail powered satellite.

Pictured: NanoSail-D solar sail and the development team, courtesy of NASA.