Jump to content

Cosmos 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 65.54.98.165 (talk) at 00:47, 22 June 2005 (Added info). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An artist's drawing of Cosmos 1


Cosmos 1 is 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 Borisoglebsk submarine in the Barents Sea. As of 16:20 PDT (19:20 EDT, 23:20 UTC) on the day of launch, it is unclear whether the spacecraft is indeed healthy and in Earth orbit. The spacecraft has not been observed or contacted since about fifteen minutes after launch, when a signal from Cosmos 1 was lost. If the spacecraft does survive, then photons from the Sun should "push" on the solar sail's blades and thus increase the spacecraft's speed.

The Planetary Society released the following statement at 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 22:00 UTC) on June 21:

The Cosmos 1 spacecraft was launched today but we cannot, at this time, confirm that a successful orbit injection. Some launch vehicle and spacecraft telemetry data gave ambiguous information during the launch. Since the orbit insertion burn, no information has been received from the spacecraft. There are continuing efforts to receive a signal from the spacecraft.

If successful, it will be the first-ever 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 is US$4 million.

Starting from around midnight on June 22 several Russian news agencies and a dozen of Russian news sites have reported that the launch had failed.


Planned mission profile

To test the solar sail concept, the Cosmos 1 project launched an orbital spacecraft with a full complement of eight sail blades during a window opening June 21, 2005. The spacecraft has a mass of 100 kg and consists of eight triangular sail blades which will be deployed from a central hub after launch by inflating structural tubes. The sail blades are each 15 m long, have a total surface area of 600 square meters, and are made of Mylar.

The spacecraft was launched on a Volna rocket (a converted SS-N-18 ICBM) from a Russian Delta III submarine submerged in the Barents Sea. The spacecraft's initial circular orbit will be at an altitude of about 800 km where it will unfurl the sails. The sails will then be used to gradually raise the spacecraft to a higher earth orbit. "Cosmos 1 might boost its orbit 31 to 62 miles over the expected 30-day life of the mission," says Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society. [1]

The mission is expected to end within a month of launch as the mylar of the blades degrades in sunlight.

Possible use of beam-powered propulsion

The solar sail craft may also be used to measure the effect of artificial microwaves aimed at it from a radar installation. A 70 m dish at the Goldstone facility of the Deep Space Network would be used to irradiate the sail with a 450 kW beam. This experiment in beam-powered propulsion will only be attempted after the prime mission objective of controlled solar sail flight is achieved.

Tracking of spacecraft

The craft should be visible to the naked eye from most of the Earth's surface: the planned orbit has an inclination of 80°, so it should be visible from latitudes of up to at least 80° north and south. A network of tracking stations around the world will maintain contact with the solar sail during the mission. Tracking stations include the Tarusa station 75 miles south of Moscow and the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley. Mission control will be based primarily at the Russian company NPO Lavochkin in Moscow – a center that the Planetary Society calls Mission Operations Moscow (MOM).

Physics of Cosmos 1

The craft will be constantly accelerating as a result of photons colliding with the sails. Photons are sub-atomic particles which make up light which, to state the obvious, travel at the speed of light. As photons collide with the surface of the sails their kinetic energy is transferred to the object. As there is no air resistance to oppose the velocity of the craft, acceleration is proportional to the number of photons colliding with it per unit time. It has been calculated to initially be 0.0005 m s-2[2]. The acceleration will be initially, to all intents and purposes, constant but as the craft's distance from the sun increases fewer photons will collide per unit time and acceleration will decrease. The craft has been built to be light and amounts to 100kg.

Other aspects of the Cosmos 1 project

Besides the main spacecraft, launched in June 2005, the Cosmos 1 project has funded two other craft:

  • A suborbital test was attempted in 2001 with only two sail blades. The spacecraft failed to separate from the rocket, so the test was not successful.
  • A second orbital spacecraft is under construction, but the decision to launch has yet to be made at the time of writing.

One of Cosmos 1's solar sail blades was displayed at the Rockefeller Center in 2003.

For the latest news on the mission

  • Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 weblog, updated daily until launch
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Cosmos_1&oldid=15599776"