# Could Tiny Solar Sails Become the Future of Space Travel?

An episode of [Bedtime Astronomy](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1736397134), 27 Sep 2026, 23 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75304027/sailsp.mp3

Cornell students have successfully tested tiny solar sails in orbit using miniature ChipSats and 3D-printed spacecraft. Their Alpha CubeSat and Sailing to the Stars missions demonstrated how sunlight can propel ultra-light spacecraft, while testing low-cost navigation and deployment technologies. Could these tiny sails become a stepping stone toward future missions across the solar system—and eventually interstellar space? Thank you for listening to Bedtime Astronomy — your guide to the cosmos. New episodes on space exploration, NASA missions & the latest astronomy breakthroughs. This episode includes AI-generated content.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
[0:07] Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomy podcast. Each episode offers a
[0:12] Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
[0:16] Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
[0:20] Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
[0:22] Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
[0:27] Speaker 2: I want you to, um... Picture a traditional spacecraft. Like
[0:30] Speaker 2: really hold that specific image in your mind for just
[0:33] Speaker 2: a second.
[0:33] Speaker 3: Oh, you mean like a massive multi-billion dollar metal behemoth?
[0:38] Speaker 2: Exactly. Like something completely covered in that crinkly reflective gold
[0:42] Speaker 2: foil bristling with complex parabolic antennas. I mean, probably the
[0:47] Speaker 2: size of a city bus, right? Right.
[0:49] Speaker 3: And being assembled in some sterile, ultra-filtered clean room by
[0:53] Speaker 3: an army of engineers in those white bunny suits.
[0:55] Speaker 2: Yeah. And to even get it into space, you have
[0:57] Speaker 2: to strap it to a rocket the size of a skyscraper.
[1:00] Speaker 2: A rocket filled with, you know, hundreds of tons of
[1:03] Speaker 2: highly explosive liquid fuel. That is the classic cinematic image
[1:08] Speaker 2: of space exploration we all grew up with.
[1:10] Speaker 3: It absolutely is.
[1:11] Speaker 2: But now I want you to take that image and
[1:13] Speaker 2: completely erase it from your mind. Just wipe the slate
[1:16] Speaker 2: totally clean. Instead, I want you to picture a spacecraft
[1:19] Speaker 2: that is slightly larger than a standard cardboard pizza box.
[1:23] Speaker 3: A pizza box. Yeah, it's quite the contrast.
[1:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. Right. And the main computer that runs this entire spacecraft,
[1:28] Speaker 2: it doesn't fill a server rack. It doesn't even fill
[1:30] Speaker 2: a shoe box, honestly, if it's perfectly right in the
[1:32] Speaker 2: palm of your hand.
[1:33] Speaker 3: Which, I mean, it forces us to completely shatter our
[1:37] Speaker 3: preconceived notions of what actually belongs in orbit.
[1:39] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:40] Speaker 3: We are so heavily conditioned to associate space travel with
[1:43] Speaker 3: immense physical scale.
[1:45] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:45] Speaker 3: You know, and, well. Astronomical government budgets.
[1:49] Speaker 2: Oh, 100%. But what we are looking at today is
[1:52] Speaker 2: a total paradigm shift. We're talking about student-designed free-flying light sails.
[1:57] Speaker 3: Yeah, we are moving into an era where the space
[2:00] Speaker 3: vehicle itself is measured in grams rather than tons, which
[2:04] Speaker 3: is just wild to think about.
[2:05] Speaker 2: It really is. And our mission today is to understand
[2:08] Speaker 2: exactly how these microscopic vehicles operate, like how they are
[2:11] Speaker 2: being built using everyday electronics, and how they might just
[2:14] Speaker 2: be the key to humanity reaching other star systems.
[2:17] Speaker 3: Because they hitch a ride up to the International Space Station,
[2:20] Speaker 3: fold it up like high-tech origami inside these tiny little
[2:23] Speaker 3: deployment boxes, and once they're pushed out into the vacuum
[2:25] Speaker 3: of space, they unfold, they catch the sunlight, and they
[2:28] Speaker 3: literally fly.
[2:29] Speaker 2: Yeah. And before we get to the interstellar stuff, the
[2:32] Speaker 2: craziest part to me isn't just the sheer size of
[2:35] Speaker 2: these things. It's how they move. We're talking about literal
[2:38] Speaker 2: light sails. They don't carry heavy tanks of hydrazine or
[2:43] Speaker 2: explosive liquid oxygen, right?
[2:44] Speaker 3: No, not at all. They accelerate to incredibly high velocities
[2:48] Speaker 3: by harnessing the momentum of literal photons, like actual particles
[2:53] Speaker 3: of light from the sun.
[2:54] Speaker 2: Which just sounds like pure sci-fi fantasy, sailing on beams
[2:58] Speaker 2: of light. But the underlying physics are very real, aren't they?
[3:01] Speaker 3: They are. And the engineering math behind this is what
[3:04] Speaker 3: makes it so profoundly important for our future. Because... Well,
[3:07] Speaker 3: the entire history of space exploration has been dominated by
[3:10] Speaker 3: this concept known as the tyranny of the rocket equation.
[3:13] Speaker 2: Oh, right. The idea that fuel is heavy, so to
[3:16] Speaker 2: carry that fuel, you need more fuel.
[3:18] Speaker 3: Precisely. Like, if you want to move a heavy spacecraft,
[3:20] Speaker 3: you need a massive amount of propellant. But that propellant
[3:23] Speaker 3: obviously has mass, so now your rocket is heavier, which
[3:26] Speaker 3: means you need even more fuel just to lift the
[3:28] Speaker 3: fuel you just added.
[3:29] Speaker 2: It's just this vicious, exponentially expensive cycle.
[3:33] Speaker 3: Exactly. It severely limits how far and how fast we
[3:36] Speaker 3: can go. But by shrinking the entire spacecraft down to
[3:39] Speaker 3: a grand scale footprint, you bypass the rocket equation almost completely.
[3:44] Speaker 3: You change the mathematical foundation of spaceflight. Suddenly, the future
[3:48] Speaker 3: of space is shockingly cheap.
[3:50] Speaker 2: OK, but I need to pause you on the physics
[3:52] Speaker 2: of the sailing itself, though, because my high school science
[3:56] Speaker 2: classes definitely taught me that light like photons, they have
[4:00] Speaker 2: no mass.
[4:00] Speaker 3: Right. They don't have resting mass.
[4:02] Speaker 2: So if force equals mass times acceleration and light has
[4:05] Speaker 2: zero mass, How on Earth can a beam of light
[4:08] Speaker 2: physically push a spacecraft? Like, that doesn't make sense to me.
[4:11] Speaker 3: It's a brilliant question, and it really gets to the
[4:12] Speaker 3: heart of quantum mechanics. So while photons do not have
[4:16] Speaker 3: rest mass, as we call it, they do possess momentum.
[4:19] Speaker 3: This comes straight from Einstein's theories of relativity.
[4:21] Speaker 2: Okay, momentum. So how does that translate to a physical push?
[4:25] Speaker 3: Well, when a photon strikes a highly reflective surface, like
[4:28] Speaker 3: the ultra-thin material of a light sail, it bounces off.
[4:30] Speaker 3: And that act of reflection is essentially a tiny physical collision.
[4:34] Speaker 3: The photon transfers its momentum to the sail.
[4:36] Speaker 2: Oh, kind of like a microscopic billiard ball bouncing off
[4:39] Speaker 2: a bumper.
[4:40] Speaker 3: Exactly like that. Yes.
[4:41] Speaker 2: So a single photon provides a push, but I imagine
[4:44] Speaker 2: it's unimaginably small.
[4:46] Speaker 3: Oh, incredibly small.
[4:47] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[4:47] Speaker 3: But out in the vacuum of space, you know, there
[4:50] Speaker 3: is no air resistance to slow you down. And the
[4:53] Speaker 3: sun is constantly blasting out trillions upon trillions of photons
[4:57] Speaker 3: every single second.
[4:59] Speaker 2: So those microscopic pushes just start to add up.
[5:01] Speaker 3: Right. Over days, months and years. That gentle, continuous pressure
[5:06] Speaker 3: accelerates the sail to speeds that conventional chemical rockets could
[5:10] Speaker 3: never even dream of achieving.
[5:12] Speaker 2: OK, that makes sense. It's like death by a trillion
[5:14] Speaker 2: tiny pushes. Now, to understand how these sails actually function
[5:18] Speaker 2: out there in the harsh environment of low Earth orbit,
[5:21] Speaker 2: we really need to look at a specific mission.
[5:23] Speaker 3: The Alpha CubeSat experiment.
[5:24] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Because this recently proved that this isn't just,
[5:28] Speaker 2: you know, whiteboard theory. It actually flew and it had
[5:30] Speaker 2: this wildly successful run. before eventually burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
[5:35] Speaker 3: Alpha really is the perfect case study here. I mean,
[5:38] Speaker 3: it launched in late 2025, hitching a ride on the
[5:42] Speaker 3: NG-23 resupply mission to the space station. It served as
[5:45] Speaker 3: the ultimate proof of concept for this entire microscale technology architecture.
[5:50] Speaker 2: Let's break down what Alpha actually looked like. It was
[5:52] Speaker 2: a 1U CubeSat. And for anyone trying to visualize this,
[5:56] Speaker 2: a 1U is a standard size metric in the satellite world. Right.
[6:00] Speaker 3: It stands for one unit.
[6:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a cube that is exactly 10 centimeters
[6:04] Speaker 2: on each side, so basically the size of a large
[6:06] Speaker 2: Rubik's Cube or like a square tissue box. But what's
[6:09] Speaker 2: wild is that the main chassis of this cube wasn't
[6:11] Speaker 2: machined out of expensive space-grade titanium.
[6:14] Speaker 3: No, it was fully 3D printed, which is amazing in itself.
[6:18] Speaker 2: Right, and tucked inside that little 3D printed box was
[6:21] Speaker 2: the folded up light sail. And attached directly to the
[6:24] Speaker 2: center of that sail was the real star of the show,
[6:26] Speaker 2: which is the chipset.
[6:28] Speaker 3: The chipset platform is just a marvel of miniaturization. We
[6:32] Speaker 3: are looking at a fully functional spacecraft architecture shrunk completely
[6:35] Speaker 3: down to a single printed circuit board.
[6:37] Speaker 2: Just a single board.
[6:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, this gram-scale chip rides on the sail and literally
[6:42] Speaker 3: handles everything. It manages the ground communications, the steering algorithms.
[6:47] Speaker 3: The sensor data gathering.
[6:48] Speaker 2: So it does everything a traditional, bulky, multimillion-dollar satellite does,
[6:53] Speaker 2: but for just a tiny fraction of the mass and
[6:55] Speaker 2: the cost?
[6:56] Speaker 3: Exactly. It's incredibly efficient.
[6:58] Speaker 2: And the communications aspect is what I just love about
[7:00] Speaker 2: this mission. They deployed this sail in low-Earth orbit, flying
[7:04] Speaker 2: hundreds of miles above our heads at thousands of miles
[7:07] Speaker 2: an hour. But to talk to it, they didn't reserve
[7:10] Speaker 2: time on some massive, multibillion-dollar government satellite dish network, did they?
[7:15] Speaker 3: No, they didn't. Amateur radio operators all around the world
[7:19] Speaker 3: use something called the TinyGS network to establish contact.
[7:22] Speaker 2: Which is just so cool.
[7:23] Speaker 3: It is a remarkable achievement in crowdsourced science, honestly. TinyGS
[7:28] Speaker 3: is an open source network of small, low-cost ground stations
[7:31] Speaker 3: operated by everyday hobbyists.
[7:33] Speaker 2: So these enthusiasts in their backyards were literally picking up
[7:36] Speaker 2: the digital pings from a spacecraft that you could hide
[7:39] Speaker 2: inside your wallet.
[7:40] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[7:41] Speaker 3: Joshua Umensky Castro, the mission lead. pointed out what a
[7:44] Speaker 3: massive historical milestone this was.
[7:46] Speaker 2: Right, because he noted that this was the very first
[7:48] Speaker 2: time in history that a spacecraft of this minuscule size
[7:51] Speaker 2: successfully transmitted complete, uncorrupted data packets from orbit back down
[7:56] Speaker 2: to the ground.
[7:57] Speaker 3: And the ham radio operators just kept pulling down data
[7:59] Speaker 3: packets day after day. That is, until the faint atmospheric
[8:03] Speaker 3: drag present in low-Earth orbit finally pulled the sail down.
[8:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere in
[8:09] Speaker 2: May 2026. But looking at the mechanics of this, I
[8:12] Speaker 2: have a major glaring question about how it survived long
[8:15] Speaker 2: enough to send anything at all.
[8:17] Speaker 3: Oh, let's hear it.
[8:19] Speaker 2: OK, so if I take an expensive smartwatch and I
[8:23] Speaker 2: tape it to a cheap plastic kite and then I
[8:25] Speaker 2: throw it out the window of a Cessna flying at 10,000 feet,
[8:28] Speaker 2: it is not going to fly gracefully.
[8:30] Speaker 3: Definitely not.
[8:31] Speaker 2: Right. It is going to tumble wildly and violently through
[8:33] Speaker 2: the air. So if this Alpha spacecraft is just a tiny,
[8:37] Speaker 2: rigid microchip glued to a pizza box-sized piece of shiny,
[8:40] Speaker 2: flexible material, how is it not just tumbling helplessly in orbit?
[8:45] Speaker 3: That is the crucial engineering hurdle right there.
[8:47] Speaker 2: I mean, if it's spinning like a top, how does
[8:50] Speaker 2: it ever manage to point its tiny antenna at Earth
[8:52] Speaker 2: to send those data packets?
[8:54] Speaker 3: Well, in a vacuum of space, you don't have aerodynamic surfaces.
[8:57] Speaker 3: You can't use airplane wings or tail fins to stabilize yourself.
[9:01] Speaker 3: A flat sheet of material will just tumble chaotically due
[9:04] Speaker 3: to minute uneven forces.
[9:06] Speaker 2: Which sounds like a nightmare for communication.
[9:09] Speaker 3: It is. So the Alpha CubeSat had to run a
[9:12] Speaker 3: highly specific technology demonstration before it deorbited to solve this
[9:16] Speaker 3: exact tumbling problem. The solution was their magnetorquer-only spin stabilization algorithm.
[9:23] Speaker 2: Okay, I have to admit, magnetorquer sounds like a fictional
[9:26] Speaker 2: weapon from a Saturday morning cartoon. What physically is a magnetorquer?
[9:30] Speaker 3: The name is definitely dramatic, but the mechanism is incredibly elegant.
[9:34] Speaker 3: A magnetorquer is essentially just a coil of copper wire.
[9:37] Speaker 2: Just a wire coil.
[9:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, because when you run an electrical current through a
[9:40] Speaker 3: wire coil, you generate a magnetic field. You basically create
[9:44] Speaker 3: a basic electromagnet.
[9:45] Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Like wrapping wire around a nail and attaching
[9:48] Speaker 2: it to a battery to pick up paper clips in
[9:50] Speaker 2: grade school?
[9:51] Speaker 3: The exact same principle. What? Now remember that the Earth
[9:54] Speaker 3: itself is surrounded by a massive natural magnetic field. Right.
[9:57] Speaker 3: So the tiny computer on the chipset takes sensor readings
[10:01] Speaker 3: to figure out exactly how it's tumbling. And then it
[10:03] Speaker 3: pulses electrical current through its onboard wire coils at highly
[10:08] Speaker 3: specific intervals.
[10:09] Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
[10:10] Speaker 3: Yeah. This creates a tiny magnetic field on the spacecraft
[10:13] Speaker 3: that pushes against the Earth's massive magnetic field.
[10:16] Speaker 2: Ah, so it's like two magnets repelling each other. Yes.
[10:19] Speaker 3: Think of a compass needle naturally wanting to align itself
[10:22] Speaker 3: with magnetic north. By carefully timing these magnetic pushes and
[10:26] Speaker 3: pulls against Earth's magnetic field, the algorithm can physically force
[10:30] Speaker 3: the sail to spin in a controlled manner.
[10:33] Speaker 2: So it'd act like a gyroscope, which completely stops the
[10:35] Speaker 2: chaotic tumbling.
[10:37] Speaker 3: Exactly. And the most impressive part is that they achieve
[10:39] Speaker 3: this precise stabilization using only COTS components.
[10:43] Speaker 2: Right. And COTS meaning commercial off-the-shelf.
[10:46] Speaker 3: Yes. They didn't invent... a bespoke million-dollar space-grade gyroscope in
[10:51] Speaker 3: a pristine laboratory. They literally bought parts you can essentially
[10:55] Speaker 3: find in commercial electronics catalogs.
[10:57] Speaker 2: That is so wild. The avionics were entirely COTs. I
[11:02] Speaker 2: read that Alpha featured the first-ever spaceflight of a ROC
[11:05] Speaker 2: BLIC Iridium modem. Now, I looked this up, and this
[11:09] Speaker 2: is a standard, commercially-available modem.
[11:12] Speaker 3: It is, yeah.
[11:12] Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing logistics companies use to track
[11:15] Speaker 2: shipping containers crossing the ocean, or like, researchers used to
[11:19] Speaker 2: pull data from remote weather stations in the Arctic.
[11:22] Speaker 3: And they adapted it to function as a space to
[11:24] Speaker 3: ground communications relay in orbit.
[11:27] Speaker 2: But I'm stuck on the durability here. You're taking a
[11:29] Speaker 2: modem meant for a shipping container and putting it into
[11:31] Speaker 2: the radiation soaked vacuum of space. How does it not
[11:35] Speaker 2: just instantly fry? Don't we spend billions radiation hardening space electronics?
[11:40] Speaker 3: We absolutely do for deep space missions or for satellites
[11:43] Speaker 3: expected to last 15 years in higher orbits.
[11:46] Speaker 2: Right.
[11:46] Speaker 3: But Alpha was flying in low Earth orbit. Down there,
[11:49] Speaker 3: the Earth's magnetic field still provides a pretty significant protective
[11:53] Speaker 3: bubble against the worst solar radiation. Plus, the mission lifecycle
[11:57] Speaker 3: was only intended to be a few months before it
[11:58] Speaker 3: burned up.
[11:59] Speaker 2: Oh, so they didn't need it to last a decade anyway.
[12:01] Speaker 3: Exactly. The philosophy here is that the components are so
[12:05] Speaker 3: cheap and accessible that if one out of ten fails
[12:08] Speaker 3: due to a random radiation strike, you literally just launch
[12:11] Speaker 3: another one, achieving complete spin stability and reliable data transmission
[12:16] Speaker 3: with tiny, off-the-shelf parts fully validates this entire low-cost concept.
[12:21] Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. But even with the
[12:23] Speaker 2: communications and the tumbling solved, you still have a huge
[12:27] Speaker 2: physical hurdle, like the origami problem. Oh, yeah.
[12:30] Speaker 3: The deployment.
[12:31] Speaker 2: Yeah. You have this incredibly delicate, ultra-thin sail material jammed
[12:35] Speaker 2: into a tiny 10-centimeter box. How do you eject that
[12:39] Speaker 2: material into the vacuum of space without it tangling or
[12:42] Speaker 2: ripping or or one corner just getting stuck on the
[12:44] Speaker 2: edge of the box.
[12:45] Speaker 3: The deployment dynamics are arguably the riskiest phase of the
[12:48] Speaker 3: entire mission.
[12:49] Speaker 2: Which brings us to the companion project, because you can't
[12:51] Speaker 2: really test how something unfolds in zero gravity while you
[12:54] Speaker 2: are standing on Earth, right?
[12:55] Speaker 1: No.
[12:56] Speaker 3: Gravity always pulls the delicate sail down. It ruins the test.
[12:59] Speaker 2: So they launched a mission on the Crew 11 flight
[13:02] Speaker 2: to the International Space Station called Sailing to the Stars.
[13:05] Speaker 3: Yes. Instead of deploying the sails outside in the open
[13:09] Speaker 3: vacuum and just hoping for the best, They used the
[13:12] Speaker 3: interior pressurized microgravity environment of the ISS itself as a
[13:17] Speaker 3: massive physics laboratory.
[13:20] Speaker 2: Wow.
[13:21] Speaker 3: The mission was specifically designed to test the deployment dynamics
[13:24] Speaker 3: of six separate light sails right there inside the station.
[13:28] Speaker 2: So the astronauts actually set up cameras and gathered highly
[13:31] Speaker 2: critical video footage alongside IMU data, that's inertial measurement unit data,
[13:36] Speaker 2: just to map exactly how the sail material behaves and
[13:39] Speaker 2: unfolds when there's no gravity to warp it.
[13:41] Speaker 3: Which gave them incredible insights.
[13:43] Speaker 2: But my absolute favorite part of the Sailing to the
[13:46] Speaker 2: Stars mission is the deployer mechanisms they used to release
[13:49] Speaker 2: the sails. They tested two different designs, and both were
[13:52] Speaker 2: entirely 3D printed, using what the engineers described as modular
[13:56] Speaker 2: CubeSat LEGO components.
[13:58] Speaker 3: That modular approach is just brilliant for rapid prototyping. If
[14:02] Speaker 3: a specific hinge or release catch doesn't work during a test,
[14:05] Speaker 3: you don't have to remachine an entire metal block. You
[14:07] Speaker 3: just swap out the individual module, much like snapping LEGO
[14:10] Speaker 3: bricks together.
[14:11] Speaker 2: Okay, but I have to stop you here and genuinely
[14:13] Speaker 2: push back on the materials they used because this is
[14:16] Speaker 2: where my mind was truly blown and where I started
[14:19] Speaker 2: questioning if this was brilliant or just completely reckless.
[14:23] Speaker 3: Oh, here we go.
[14:24] Speaker 2: To spin stabilize these deployers inside the space station so
[14:27] Speaker 2: they wouldn't float away during the test, they didn't use
[14:30] Speaker 2: advanced space gyroscopes. They used laptop hard disk drive reaction wheels,
[14:35] Speaker 2: the spinning disk from an old computer.
[14:37] Speaker 3: They did, yes.
[14:38] Speaker 2: And to trigger the release mechanism to push the sail out,
[14:41] Speaker 2: They used actual standard infrared TV remote controls. You're telling
[14:46] Speaker 2: me NASA lets you bring e-waste and living room accessories
[14:49] Speaker 2: onto a $ 100 billion orbital laboratory? Are we just MacGyvering
[14:54] Speaker 2: our way through space exploration now?
[14:56] Speaker 3: It absolutely sounds like MacGyvering. I'll give you that.
[14:58] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[14:58] Speaker 3: But if we look at the physics and the core
[15:00] Speaker 3: engineering philosophy at play here, it actually makes perfect sense.
[15:04] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm listening. Convince me.
[15:05] Speaker 3: Well, the goal of the Sailing to the Stars experiment
[15:08] Speaker 3: inside the ISS... isn't to build a luxury, long-lasting space vehicle.
[15:13] Speaker 3: The goal is rapid, functional, kinematic data gathering. Think about
[15:18] Speaker 3: what a reaction wheel does. To stabilize a spacecraft, you
[15:22] Speaker 3: need to spin a mass in one direction so the
[15:24] Speaker 3: spacecraft resists rotating in the other direction. It's just the
[15:28] Speaker 3: conservation of angular momentum.
[15:29] Speaker 2: Oh, like holding a spinning bicycle wheel by the pegs.
[15:32] Speaker 2: It fights you if you try to tilt it.
[15:34] Speaker 3: Exactly that principle. You need a highly balanced wheel spinning
[15:37] Speaker 3: very fast. Well, what is a laptop hard drive? It
[15:41] Speaker 3: is literally designed by commercial manufacturers to spin a perfectly
[15:45] Speaker 3: balanced magnetic disc flawlessly at thousands of revolutions per minute
[15:49] Speaker 3: for years on end without vibrating.
[15:51] Speaker 2: Wait, so it's already a reaction wheel?
[15:52] Speaker 3: Yes, it is a miniaturized, precision-engineered reaction wheel that happens
[15:56] Speaker 3: to cost $ 20 instead of $ 20, 000.
[15:58] Speaker 2: Okay, the hard drive makes a strange kind of sense
[16:01] Speaker 2: when you explain the momentum, but what about the TV remote?
[16:04] Speaker 2: Why not just use a laptop with a Bluetooth controller
[16:06] Speaker 2: to trigger the sale release?
[16:08] Speaker 3: Because of the environment they were in. The ISS is
[16:10] Speaker 3: packed with highly sensitive, mission-critical radio and communications equipment.
[16:14] Speaker 2: Right.
[16:15] Speaker 3: If you use a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi controller, you are
[16:18] Speaker 3: broadcasting radio frequencies. You risk RF interference with the station's
[16:22] Speaker 3: actual life support or comm systems. But a standard TV
[16:27] Speaker 3: remote doesn't use radio waves at all. It uses a
[16:29] Speaker 3: tiny pulse of infrared light.
[16:32] Speaker 2: Ah, so it's totally optically isolated. The remote just flashes
[16:36] Speaker 2: an invisible light at a sensor on the deployer, triggering
[16:38] Speaker 2: the release, and there's zero chance of messing with the
[16:41] Speaker 2: station's cons.
[16:41] Speaker 3: Precisely. It is a total paradigm shift in how we
[16:45] Speaker 3: approach space hardware. By using commercial off-the-shelf parts, you know,
[16:48] Speaker 3: hard drives, TV remotes, modular 3D-printed blocks, engineers can assess
[16:53] Speaker 3: the release kinematics infinitely faster and cheaper.
[16:55] Speaker 2: Because if a deployer designed jams, you haven't lost $ 10
[16:58] Speaker 2: million in five years of bureaucratic development.
[17:01] Speaker 3: Exactly. You just grab another $ 20 hard drive, tweak the
[17:03] Speaker 3: 3D-print file... And try again. It completely democratizes the engineering process.
[17:08] Speaker 2: Democratizes is the perfect word. Because relying on TV remotes
[17:12] Speaker 2: and Lego-like components makes absolute sense once you realize exactly
[17:16] Speaker 2: who is building these spacecraft.
[17:18] Speaker 3: Right.
[17:18] Speaker 2: These are not decades-long veterans of the Cold War space
[17:22] Speaker 2: race sitting in a Lockheed Martin facility. These missions are
[17:26] Speaker 2: entirely student-led.
[17:27] Speaker 3: Which is arguably the most inspiring aspect of this entire endeavor.
[17:31] Speaker 3: The Alpha CubeSat and the Sailing to the Stars missions
[17:34] Speaker 3: were developed primarily by university students at Cornell's Space Systems
[17:38] Speaker 3: Design Studio, the SSDS.
[17:40] Speaker 2: And the origin of the alpha concept goes back even
[17:43] Speaker 2: further down the educational ladder. It wasn't even proposed by
[17:46] Speaker 2: a university researcher originally. The core concept came from a
[17:50] Speaker 2: high school student.
[17:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a proposal submitted to the Museum of
[17:53] Speaker 3: Science Fiction's International CubeSat Design Competition. That detail really highlights
[17:58] Speaker 3: how accessible the technology has become.
[18:00] Speaker 2: Definitely. Good ideas in this space no longer require a Ph.D.
[18:04] Speaker 2: and a top-tier security clearance. Since 2016, over 150 students
[18:08] Speaker 2: have contributed to these spacecraft projects at Cornell.
[18:10] Speaker 3: And I want to emphasize that this isn't just an
[18:12] Speaker 3: academic exercise where they write a theoretical paper, get a grade,
[18:15] Speaker 3: and just move on.
[18:16] Speaker 2: Right. These students are turning wrenches and soldering boards on
[18:19] Speaker 2: actual flight hardware.
[18:20] Speaker 3: Yes. The real-world impact of that is staggering. More than
[18:25] Speaker 3: 50% of the students who work on these projects go
[18:27] Speaker 3: on to intern or work full-time in the aerospace industry.
[18:31] Speaker 2: They are physically building the next generation of space infrastructure
[18:35] Speaker 2: while they are still taking midterms.
[18:37] Speaker 3: And that hands-on experience of wrestling with physical hardware is
[18:40] Speaker 3: just irreplaceable. Karina Padres, who managed the Sailing to the
[18:45] Speaker 3: Stars project, really captured the essence of this transition from
[18:49] Speaker 3: theory to reality.
[18:51] Speaker 2: Oh, what did she say?
[18:52] Speaker 3: She noted that going into college, it was her ultimate
[18:54] Speaker 3: dream to work on something that would actually fly in space.
[18:58] Speaker 3: And through this program, she didn't just get to watch.
[19:01] Speaker 3: She led a team from the initial concept phase through
[19:05] Speaker 3: the endless testing all the way to a physical launch
[19:07] Speaker 3: to the ISS.
[19:08] Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing.
[19:10] Speaker 3: When these students graduate and enter the workforce, they aren't
[19:13] Speaker 3: just theoretically knowledgeable about orbital mechanics. They know exactly how
[19:17] Speaker 3: physical hardware behaves in microgravity because they've already put it there.
[19:21] Speaker 2: So we have a bunch of brilliant students using hard
[19:24] Speaker 2: drives and TV remotes to fly pizza boxes in low
[19:27] Speaker 2: Earth orbit. Why does this matter to the long-term future
[19:30] Speaker 2: of humanity? Well, these students aren't just playing with orbital toys.
[19:34] Speaker 2: They are laying the literal groundwork for human exploration beyond
[19:39] Speaker 2: our solar system.
[19:40] Speaker 3: That is the ultimate grand destination here. Both the Alpha
[19:43] Speaker 3: mission and sailing to the stars successfully completed their major objectives.
[19:47] Speaker 3: They definitively proved that a gram's chip can survive and
[19:51] Speaker 3: transmit complex data, and they mapped out exactly how to
[19:54] Speaker 3: deploy the origami sails stably.
[19:56] Speaker 2: So what's next?
[19:57] Speaker 3: The necessary next steps in the engineering roadmap are demonstrating
[20:01] Speaker 3: active steering, raising the orbit, and most importantly, testing laser propulsion.
[20:05] Speaker 2: Okay, laser propulsion. Because while catching sunlight is a great
[20:11] Speaker 2: free way to putter around low Earth orbit or, you know,
[20:14] Speaker 2: slowly sail to Mars, the sun's light is simply not
[20:17] Speaker 2: concentrated enough to get us to another star in any
[20:20] Speaker 2: reasonable amount of time. Right.
[20:21] Speaker 3: The inverse square law means sunlight gets very weak, very
[20:25] Speaker 3: fast as you leave the solar system.
[20:26] Speaker 2: But if you construct a massive Earth-based array of high-powered
[20:31] Speaker 2: lasers and point that focus beam at one of these
[20:35] Speaker 2: tiny gram-scale.
[20:36] Speaker 3: Sails, Then the physics of the journey changed dramatically. If
[20:39] Speaker 3: you have a spacecraft that weighs practically nothing, a powerful
[20:43] Speaker 3: focused laser can provide a massive amount of constant acceleration.
[20:47] Speaker 3: You aren't just relying on the ambient light of the
[20:49] Speaker 3: sun anymore. You are actively blasting the sail with immense
[20:53] Speaker 3: targeted photonic momentum.
[20:54] Speaker 2: Meaning you can push these tiny sails to a significant
[20:57] Speaker 2: fraction of the speed of light.
[20:58] Speaker 3: Correct. This paves the way for true interstellar travel. Initiatives
[21:03] Speaker 3: like Breakthrough Starshot are explicitly built around this concept.
[21:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard of them.
[21:07] Speaker 3: They envisioned launching swarms of these tiny sails and pushing
[21:11] Speaker 3: them with laser beams to reach nearby star systems like
[21:15] Speaker 3: Alpha Centauri to search for extraterrestrial life and capture close-up
[21:19] Speaker 3: images of habitable exoplanets.
[21:22] Speaker 2: And a journey to our nearest neighboring star would take
[21:24] Speaker 2: a traditional chemical rocket tens of thousands of years. But
[21:28] Speaker 2: with laser-propelled light sails, that same journey could be completed
[21:32] Speaker 2: in just a couple of decades.
[21:33] Speaker 3: It is genuinely mind-boggling. We are talking about humanity Finally
[21:37] Speaker 3: reaching the stars. And not with massive kilometer-long starships carrying
[21:41] Speaker 3: thousands of people, but with swarms of microchips sailing on
[21:45] Speaker 3: invisible beams of light.
[21:47] Speaker 2: It really is. And there is one final, incredibly poetic
[21:49] Speaker 2: detail from the Alpha mission that I want to explore.
[21:52] Speaker 2: Before it was pulled down by the atmosphere and burned
[21:54] Speaker 2: up like a shooting star, the Alpha CubeSat was carrying
[21:57] Speaker 2: something special. Attached to its solar panels were the first
[22:00] Speaker 2: ever holographic image message plaques sent to space.
[22:03] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. It acts as a modern, miniaturized update to
[22:05] Speaker 3: the famous golden records that were carried by the Voyager
[22:08] Speaker 3: probes back in the 1970s.
[22:10] Speaker 2: Exactly. But scaled completely down for the microspacecraft era. Which
[22:15] Speaker 2: leads to a fascinating thought experiment for you, the listener.
[22:18] Speaker 3: It really does.
[22:19] Speaker 2: If we truly are on the verge of sending these
[22:21] Speaker 2: laser-propelled ships out into the deep dark, headed for neighboring stars...
[22:26] Speaker 2: they are going to leave our solar system and enter
[22:28] Speaker 2: the interstellar medium. Out there, in the deep vacuum, there
[22:33] Speaker 2: is almost no friction, no oxygen to cause rust, no
[22:36] Speaker 2: planetary atmosphere to drag them down.
[22:39] Speaker 3: They could survive almost indefinitely. Right.
[22:41] Speaker 2: These gram-scale chips could float silently through the void for millions,
[22:45] Speaker 2: maybe billions of years. It is highly likely that these
[22:48] Speaker 2: tiny pieces of silicon and 3D-printed plastic will actually outlive
[22:52] Speaker 2: the human race itself. They might become our microscopic tombs,
[22:56] Speaker 2: the only surviving evidence that we were ever here at all.
[22:58] Speaker 3: It's heavy thought.
[22:59] Speaker 1: It is.
[23:00] Speaker 2: So I want to pose a question directly to you.
[23:02] Speaker 2: If you were handed one of these tiny plaques, knowing
[23:05] Speaker 2: it might be the very last artifact of human history,
[23:08] Speaker 2: drifting through a distant star system a billion years from now,
[23:11] Speaker 2: what holographic message would you want etched onto that gram-scale chip?
[23:16] Speaker 2: What singular, tiny image would you choose to represent all
[23:19] Speaker 2: of humanity to whatever might be out there, waiting in
[23:21] Speaker 2: the light?

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