During the Age of Sail, ships circled the globe on voyages of discovery and trade. That era ended in the 1800s, when coal-fired steam engines began to replace wind power. Now we may be entering a new ...

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System spacecraft in Earth orbit. NASA / Aero Animation / Ben Schweighart Earlier this year, NASA loaded a microwave-sized device packed ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: NASA/Aero Animation ...

How solar sailing actually works At its core, solar sailing is a deceptively simple idea: instead of firing a rocket, a spacecraft spreads a thin, mirror-like sheet that catches sunlight and turns its ...

Solar sails have some major advantages over traditional propulsion methods—most notably, they don't use any propellant. But, how exactly do they turn? In traditional sailing, a ship's captain can ...

Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS), a U.S. commercial space company offering satellites, satellite components, and in-space transportation and hosted payload services, today announced that it was awarded a ...