{"id":242776,"date":"2026-08-16T05:07:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/just-as-sailboats-are-powered-by-the-wind-space-scientists-and-engineers-dream-of-a-day-when-spacecraft-can-be-powered-by-solar-sails"},"modified":"2026-08-16T05:07:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T10:07:44","slug":"just-as-sailboats-are-powered-by-the-wind-space-scientists-and-engineers-dream-of-a-day-when-spacecraft-can-be-powered-by-solar-sails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/just-as-sailboats-are-powered-by-the-wind-space-scientists-and-engineers-dream-of-a-day-when-spacecraft-can-be-powered-by-solar-sails","title":{"rendered":"Just as sailboats are powered by the wind, space scientists and engineers dream of a day when spacecraft can be powered by solar sails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/just-as-sailboats-are-powered-by-the-wind-space-scientists-and-engineers-dream-of-a-day-when-spacecraft-can-be-powered-by-solar-sails.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How would this work? The Sun blasts out radiation all the time. Radiation that strikes a large, shiny, sail-like structure would push on it, much as the wind pushes on a sailboat. Although the push would be very gentle, it would be constant. Over time, the spacecraft would be going very, very fast, using no fuel at all!<\/p>\n<p>You may have heard of the \u201csolar wind.\u201d Solar wind is made of particles blasted out from the Sun. Solar sails <strong>do not <\/strong>\u201ccatch the solar wind.\u201d Instead, solar sails use the force of the light itself. This force is much stronger than the force from the solar wind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How would this work? The Sun blasts out radiation all the time. Radiation that strikes a large, shiny, sail-like structure would push on it, much as the wind pushes on a sailboat. Although the push would be very gentle, it would be constant. Over time, the spacecraft would be going very, very fast, using no [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}