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Nasa's Near-earth Asteroid Scout

Near-Earth asteroid CubeSat goes full sail. NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, a small satellite the size of a shoebox, designed to study asteroids close to Earth, recently performed a full-scale solar sail deployment test. The test was performed in an indoor clean room to ensure the deployment mechanism's functionality after recent environmental testing. Source 6o.

Scout Asteroid Near-earth Nasas

This is amazing to me. The probe is the size of a shoe box yet the sail they are deploying is the size of a school bus. How incredibly cool that is. Will that be what we look like when we travel through space to colonize other worlds… a ship sailing through space with huge sails collecting starlight for energy? It reminds me of pictures in my mind's eye that would come to me when I thought of the early European explorers in their flimsy boats with massive sails using the wind for power. Those were wooden ships and iron men and it appears we'll be going back to something akin to that when we go into manned deep space travel.

Nasa's Near-earth Asteroid Scout UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

With solar being the cheapest and more economical way to keep power to our current space craft. To keep them powered while in orbit around our planet or traveling through space. I think once they get this into space we will not have to worry about planet sized asteroids coming to hit the earth.