More than two years after a rocket failure destroyed NASA's NanoSail-D solar sail, the agency last week launched a spare into orbit. If it unfurls as planned over the coming days, it will be the first NASA sail to open in space. Solar sails are designed to be propelled by the pressure of sunlight. They have the potential to carry spacecraft vast distances without fuel, but for years, attempts to test them in orbit have run into stormy weather. In 2001 and 2005, launch failures wrecked two solar sail missions led by the Planetary Society, a space advocacy group in California. NASA's original NanoSail-D suffered the same fate when its Falcon 1 launcher failed in 2008.
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