Cosmos 1
Encyclopedia
Cosmos 1 was a project by Cosmos Studios
and The Planetary Society
to test a solar sail
in space. As part of the project, an unmanned solar sail spacecraft christened Cosmos 1 was launched into space at 15:46:09 EDT (19:46:09 UTC
) on June 21, 2005 from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea
. However, a rocket failure prevented the spacecraft from reaching its intended orbit. Once in orbit, the spacecraft was supposed to deploy a large sail, upon which photon
s from the Sun
would push, thereby increasing the spacecraft's velocity (the contributions from the solar wind
are similar, but of much smaller magnitude).
Had the mission been successful, it would have been the first ever orbital 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 was US$
4 million. The Planetary Society planned to raise another $4 million for Cosmos 2, a reimplementation of the experiment provisionally to be launched on a Soyuz resupply mission to the International Space Station
. The Discovery Channel was an early investor. However, advances in technology and the greater availability of lower mass piggyback slots on more launch vehicles led to a redesign similar to NanoSail-D, called LightSail-1
, announced in November 2009.
spacecraft with a full complement of eight sail blades on June 21, 2005 — the summer solstice
. The spacecraft had a mass of 100 kg (220 lb) and consisted of eight triangular sail blades which would be deployed from a central hub after launch by the inflating of structural tubes. The sail blades were each 15 m long, had a total surface area of 600 square meters, and were made of aluminized reinforced PET film (MPET).
The spacecraft was launched on a Volna
rocket (a converted SS-N-18 ICBM) from a Russia
n Delta III submarine
, the Borisoglebsk
, submerged in the Barents Sea
. The spacecraft's initial circular orbit would have been at an altitude of about 800 km, where it would have unfurled the sails. The sails would then have gradually raised the spacecraft to a higher earth orbit. "Cosmos 1 might boost its orbit 31 to 62 miles [50 to 100 km] over the expected 30-day life of the mission," said Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society.
The mission was expected to end within a month of launch as the mylar of the blades would degrade in sunlight.
s aimed at it from a radar
installation. A 70 m dish at the Goldstone
facility of NASA's Deep Space Network
would have been used to irradiate the sail with a 450 kW beam. This experiment in beam-powered propulsion
would only have been attempted after the prime mission objective of controlled solar sail flight was achieved.
from most of the Earth's surface: the planned orbit had an inclination
of 80°, so it would have been visible from latitude
s of up to approximately 80° north and south.
A network of tracking stations around the world, including the Tarusa station, 75 miles (120 km) south of Moscow, and the Space Sciences Laboratory
at the University of California-Berkeley, tried to maintain contact with the solar sail during the mission. Mission control was based primarily at the Russian company NPO Lavochkin in Moscow
— a center that the Planetary Society calls Mission Operations Moscow (MOM).
of photons colliding with the sails. As photons reflected off the surface of the sails, they would transfer momentum
to them. As there would be no air resistance to oppose the velocity of the spacecraft, acceleration
would be proportional to the number of photons colliding with it per unit time. Sunlight amounts to a tiny 5×10−4 m/s² acceleration in the vicinity of the Earth. Over one day, the spacecraft's speed would reach 45 m/s (100 mph); in 100 days its speed would be 4,500 m/s (10,000 mph), in 2.74 years 45,000 m/s (100,000 mph).
At that speed, a craft would reach Pluto, a very distant dwarf planet in the solar system, in less than five years, although in practice the acceleration of a sail drops dramatically as the spacecraft gets farther from the Sun. However, in the vicinity of Earth, a solar sail's acceleration is larger than that of some other propulsion techniques; for example, the ion thruster
-propelled SMART-1
spacecraft has a maximum acceleration of 2×10−4 m/s², which allowed SMART-1 to achieve lunar orbit in November 2004 after launch in September 2003.
One of Cosmos 1's solar sail blades was displayed at the Rockefeller Center
office complex in New York City
in 2003.
Cosmos Studios
Cosmos Studios former Abbey Road Studios / EMI - studios in Skärmarbrink on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden, has been since the early sixties a landmark of Swedish and international music.-External links:* *...
and The Planetary Society
Planetary Society
The Planetary Society is a large, publicly supported, non-government and non-profit organization that has many research projects related to astronomy...
to test a solar sail
Solar sail
Solar sails are a form of spacecraft propulsion using the radiation pressure of light from a star or laser to push enormous ultra-thin mirrors to high speeds....
in space. As part of the project, an unmanned solar sail spacecraft christened Cosmos 1 was launched into space at 15:46:09 EDT (19:46:09 UTC
Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...
) on June 21, 2005 from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea
Barents Sea
The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents...
. However, a rocket failure prevented the spacecraft from reaching its intended orbit. Once in orbit, the spacecraft was supposed to deploy a large sail, upon which photon
Photon
In physics, a photon is an elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction and the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. It is also the force carrier for the electromagnetic force...
s from the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
would push, thereby increasing the spacecraft's velocity (the contributions from the solar wind
Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed over time...
are similar, but of much smaller magnitude).
Had the mission been successful, it would have been the first ever orbital use of a solar sail to speed up a spacecraft, as well as the first space mission by a space advocacy group
Space advocacy
Space advocacy can be described as the general position supporting, pleading or arguing for the idea or cause of space exploration and settlements...
. The project budget was US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4 million. The Planetary Society planned to raise another $4 million for Cosmos 2, a reimplementation of the experiment provisionally to be launched on a Soyuz resupply mission to the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
. The Discovery Channel was an early investor. However, advances in technology and the greater availability of lower mass piggyback slots on more launch vehicles led to a redesign similar to NanoSail-D, called LightSail-1
LightSail-1
LightSail-1 is a solar sail project being developed by the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization devoted to space exploration. LightSail-1 was announced in November 2009. The kite-shaped spacecraft will have a total cross-section of , and will be fitted with guidance and diagnostic electronics...
, announced in November 2009.
Planned mission profile
To test the solar sail concept, the Cosmos 1 project launched an orbitalOrbital spaceflight
An orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altitude at perigee above...
spacecraft with a full complement of eight sail blades on June 21, 2005 — the summer solstice
Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
. The spacecraft had a mass of 100 kg (220 lb) and consisted of eight triangular sail blades which would be deployed from a central hub after launch by the inflating of structural tubes. The sail blades were each 15 m long, had a total surface area of 600 square meters, and were made of aluminized reinforced PET film (MPET).
The spacecraft was launched on a Volna
Volna
Space launch vehicle Volna , is a converted SLBM used for launching artificial satellites into orbit. It is based on the R-29R designed by State Rocket Center Makayev and related to the Shtil' Launch Vehicle . The Volna is a 3 stage launch vehicle that uses liquid propellant...
rocket (a converted SS-N-18 ICBM) from a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n Delta III submarine
Delta class submarine
The Delta class is a class of submarines which formed the backbone of the Soviet and Russian strategic submarine fleet since its introduction in 1973...
, the Borisoglebsk
Russian submarine K-496 Borisoglebsk
K-496 Borisoglebsk is a Russian advanced Delta III SSBN nuclear submarine. On 21 June 2005 the vessel served as the launch platform for a missile carrying a payload containing a solar sail experiment, Cosmos 1. The submarine was based in the Russian Northern Fleet...
, submerged in the Barents Sea
Barents Sea
The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Norway and Russia. Known in the Middle Ages as the Murman Sea, the sea takes its current name from the Dutch navigator Willem Barents...
. The spacecraft's initial circular orbit would have been at an altitude of about 800 km, where it would have unfurled the sails. The sails would then have gradually raised the spacecraft to a higher earth orbit. "Cosmos 1 might boost its orbit 31 to 62 miles [50 to 100 km] over the expected 30-day life of the mission," said Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society.
The mission was expected to end within a month of launch as the mylar of the blades would degrade in sunlight.
Possible beam propulsion
The solar sail craft could also have been used to measure the effect of artificial microwaveMicrowave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...
s aimed at it from a radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
installation. A 70 m dish at the Goldstone
Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex — commonly called the Goldstone Observatory — is located in California's Mojave Desert. Operated by ITT Corporation for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, its main purpose is to track and communicate with space missions. It includes the Pioneer...
facility of NASA's Deep Space Network
Deep Space Network
The Deep Space Network, or DSN, is a world-wide network of large antennas and communication facilities that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe, and supports selected...
would have been used to irradiate the sail with a 450 kW beam. This experiment in beam-powered propulsion
Beam-powered propulsion
Beam-powered propulsion is a class of aircraft or spacecraft propulsion mechanisms that use energy beamed to the spacecraft from a remote power plant to provide energy...
would only have been attempted after the prime mission objective of controlled solar sail flight was achieved.
Tracking
The craft would have been visible to the naked eyeNaked eye
The naked eye is a figure of speech referring to human visual perception unaided by a magnifying or light-collecting optical device, such as a telescope or microscope. Vision corrected to normal acuity using corrective lenses is considered "naked"...
from most of the Earth's surface: the planned orbit had an inclination
Inclination
Inclination in general is the angle between a reference plane and another plane or axis of direction.-Orbits:The inclination is one of the six orbital parameters describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit...
of 80°, so it would have been visible from latitude
Latitude
In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...
s of up to approximately 80° north and south.
A network of tracking stations around the world, including the Tarusa station, 75 miles (120 km) south of Moscow, and the Space Sciences Laboratory
Space Sciences Laboratory
The Space Sciences Laboratory is an Organized Research Unit of the University of California, Berkeley. It is located in the Berkeley Hills above the university campus...
at the University of California-Berkeley, tried to maintain contact with the solar sail during the mission. Mission control was based primarily at the Russian company NPO Lavochkin in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
— a center that the Planetary Society calls Mission Operations Moscow (MOM).
Physics
The craft would have been gradually accelerating during each orbit as a result of the radiation pressureRadiation pressure
Radiation pressure is the pressure exerted upon any surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation. If absorbed, the pressure is the power flux density divided by the speed of light...
of photons colliding with the sails. As photons reflected off the surface of the sails, they would transfer momentum
Momentum
In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...
to them. As there would be no air resistance to oppose the velocity of the spacecraft, acceleration
Acceleration
In physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with time. In one dimension, acceleration is the rate at which something speeds up or slows down. However, since velocity is a vector, acceleration describes the rate of change of both the magnitude and the direction of velocity. ...
would be proportional to the number of photons colliding with it per unit time. Sunlight amounts to a tiny 5×10−4 m/s² acceleration in the vicinity of the Earth. Over one day, the spacecraft's speed would reach 45 m/s (100 mph); in 100 days its speed would be 4,500 m/s (10,000 mph), in 2.74 years 45,000 m/s (100,000 mph).
At that speed, a craft would reach Pluto, a very distant dwarf planet in the solar system, in less than five years, although in practice the acceleration of a sail drops dramatically as the spacecraft gets farther from the Sun. However, in the vicinity of Earth, a solar sail's acceleration is larger than that of some other propulsion techniques; for example, the ion thruster
Ion thruster
An ion thruster is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion that creates thrust by accelerating ions. Ion thrusters are categorized by how they accelerate the ions, using either electrostatic or electromagnetic force. Electrostatic ion thrusters use the Coulomb force and...
-propelled SMART-1
SMART-1
SMART-1 was a Swedish-designed European Space Agency satellite that orbited around the Moon. It was launched on September 27, 2003 at 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. "SMART" stands for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology...
spacecraft has a maximum acceleration of 2×10−4 m/s², which allowed SMART-1 to achieve lunar orbit in November 2004 after launch in September 2003.
Other aspects
Besides the main spacecraft, launched in June 2005, the Cosmos 1 project has funded two other craft:- A suborbitalSub-orbital spaceflightA sub-orbital space flight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it does not complete one orbital revolution....
test was attempted in 2001 with only two sail blades. The spacecraft failed to separate from the rocket. - A second orbital spacecraft is under construction, (LightSail-1LightSail-1LightSail-1 is a solar sail project being developed by the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization devoted to space exploration. LightSail-1 was announced in November 2009. The kite-shaped spacecraft will have a total cross-section of , and will be fitted with guidance and diagnostic electronics...
), and is scheduled to be launched in November 2011.
One of Cosmos 1
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
office complex in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 2003.
External links
- Cosmos 1 homepage at the Planetary Society
- Planetary Society's solar sail updates and press releases - current information about the Cosmos 2 follow-on project.
- Cosmos 1 page (flash only) from Cosmos StudiosCosmos StudiosCosmos Studios former Abbey Road Studios / EMI - studios in Skärmarbrink on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden, has been since the early sixties a landmark of Swedish and international music.-External links:* *...
- Near-Term Beamed Sail Propulsion Missions: Cosmos 1 and Sun-Diver (PDF file)
- Space technology: Setting sail for history (NatureNature (journal)Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, February 16, 2005) - Space yacht rides to stars on rays of sunlight (The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, February 27, 2005) - Cosmos 1 to test solar sail (Wired NewsWired NewsWired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
, June 16, 2005) - Cosmos 1 videos (Windows Media, RealPlayer, QuickTime formats)