During a parabolic flight over Europe, a small slab of graphene aerogel floated in near-weightlessness while a laboratory ...

There has been huge progress on laser pushed sails. Laser pushed sails appear to be a path to sending probes up to 20% of the speed of light when we can make 1 gram sails that are one to two meters on ...

Quick: what’s the most successful, stable, one-design dinghy class in world history? Answer: the Laser, of course, now rolling past 200,000 boats worldwide. In fact, in celebration of this milestone, ...

Nextbigfuture has a weekly video review of the big stories in science and technology. The later part of the video discusses laser pushed sails for fast missions around the solar system and then ...

A highly reflective lightsail pushed by light energy in the same way sailboats are pushed by the wind could travel as fast as one-fifth the speed of light, researchers say PROVIDENCE — NASA’s Parker ...

Nanoscale features of a laser-driven light sail showing germanium pillars and air holes embedded in a poly(methyl methacrylate) matrix, designed to achieve high ...

Engineers are developing a concept for interstellar travel using a swarm of 1,000 ultra-light "laser sails." The mission aims to send these sails to Proxima b, an exoplanet 4.25 light-years away, ...

Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require ...

Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A Chinese flotilla was spotted sailing toward the wider Western Pacific Ocean this week, the Japanese Defense Ministry ...