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 ...

Like a regular sail uses wind to navigate across an ocean, solar sails use the pressure exerted by sunlight to move through space. (Pictured: a conceptual illustration of a diffractive solar sail) ...

Whenever Anthony Glasson of design studio M51 Concepts reveals a new project, the yachting world stands to attention. That's because the prolific Hong Kong-based yacht designer always comes up with ...

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 ...