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Adapted from a BBC Online article                                                Tuesday 22nd June 2005

The fate of an experimental spacecraft designed to use light from the Sun to power space travel is still unknown. The privately funded Cosmos-1 craft was launched overnight on a Russian missile from a submarine in the Barents Sea.

The Russian Navy began a search for wreckage after launch data suggested the rocket booster failed. The Russian-built Cosmos-1 was launched aboard a modified Volna intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from the nuclear submarine Borisoglebsk. The £2.1m experimental craft uses "solar sails" for power. But the US team also working on the project reported that a weak signal from the craft had been detected.

The sail reflects particles of light, or photons, from the Sun, gaining momentum in the opposite direction. Some think solar sails offer a cheaper, faster form of spacecraft propulsion.

"Solar sailing is really the only known technology that could potentially take us to the stars one day because it does not have to carry fuel with it and because it can keep accelerating - even at incredible distances," the Planetary Society's Amir Alexander told the BBC. The acceleration from sunlight is very small; but the advantage of solar sailing over chemical propulsion is that the acceleration is sustained.

If successful, Cosmos-1 will get faster and faster - and climb higher in orbit - as time goes on.

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