Can the rays of the sun be used to travel through space? Unfortunately, we still don't know. The team that had hoped to fly the experimental solar sail craft in orbit closed its mission operations room, following disheartening reports that peg the spacecraft's loss as "virtually certain," a project manager said two days after it launched. Read the whole story at Discovery Channel News.

Cosmos 1 was a solar-sail spacecraft that scientists hoped would use pressure from sunlight to propel it through space.

On July 21, 2005, a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea fired a Volna ICBM rocket into Earth orbit carrying Cosmos 1. The spacecraft's huge, reflective sails were supposed to be deployed when it reached orbit 500 miles above the Earth.

The Babakin Space Center and the Space Research Institute in Russia developed Cosmos 1 under the direction of a team of American scientists and engineers led by The Planetary Society.

Basic Solar Sailing

• A solar sail is a spacecraft without an engine — it is pushed by light particles from the sun reflecting off giant mirror-like sails. The craft carries no fuel and can theoretically accelerate over unlimited distances.
• Cosmos 1 has eight triangular sails, each 50 feet long, configured around the central spacecraft. The sails would have been deployed by inflatable tubes once the craft was in orbit.
• Cosmos 1 was launched from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. It was carried aboard a Volna rocket — a converted ICBM from the Soviet arsenal.
• Cosmos 1 would have orbited the Earth at an altitude of more than 500 miles. It would have tried to gradually raise its orbit by solar sailing — using the pressure of light particles from the sun on its sails.
• The spacecraft was built in Russia by NPO Lavochkin under contract to The Planetary Society. Cosmos Studios is the project's sole sponsor.
• The mission's objective was to demonstrate the feasibility of solar-sail flight and possible interplanetary travel.