NASA’s new £15,000,000 spacecraft is tumbling aimlessly through space

Danny RiggPublished Oct 25, 2024, 11:43am|Updated Oct 25, 2024, 11:47am

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A new £15,000,000 NASA spacecraft is tumbling aimlessly through space after hitting a snag in a test flight.

Solar sails half the size of a tennis court should harness the pressure of sunlight to propel the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), currently in earth’s orbit.

If they’re proved successful, they may be rolled out as the new propulsion system on larger spacecraft.

But when the US space agency unfurled them, engineers noticed one of the four booms the sails are attached to had a ‘slight bend’.

‘This likely occurred as the booms and sail were pulled taut to the spacecraft during deployment’, NASA said.

A square vessel orbiting above the earth's horizon. — Eliminating the need for conventional rocket propellant, which burns fuel, would make spaceflight cheaper (Picture: NASA)

A view from inside the machinery of the spacecraft. — The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System was launched in April 2024 (Picture: NASA)

Now the vessel is tumbling with no steering because its attitude control system – which controls its orientation – was turned off before the sails were unfurled in August.

This was done ‘to accommodate the spacecraft’s changing dynamics as the sail unfurled’, NASA said.

A previous attempt to unfurl them was aborted after the solar sail paused due to an onboard power monitor detecting higher than expected currents.

The spacecraft orbiting earth wit unfurled square sails. — Once unfurled, the solar sails are roughly 30ft long on each side (Picture: NASA)

A view of the four booms holding out the unfurled sails, as it looks down towards earth. — Solar sails have to be large in order to generate thrust from the small pressure of solar radiation (Picture: NASA)

ACS3’s attitude control system will be reactivated when the vessel passes above NASA’s ground station.

At this point, it can point its high-bandwidth radio antenna down, allowing the ground team to gather data necessary to calibrate the shape of the sails and prepare it for the sailing maneuvers it is there to test.

NASA said: ‘Data collected from this flight test has already proven highly valuable, and the demonstration will continue producing critical information to enable future solar sail missions.

‘The mission team predicts the slight bend in one of the four booms will not inhibit the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System’s ability to execute its sailing maneuvers later in the technology demonstration.’