Thursday, September 2, 2010

Space Ribbon Used to Surf Earth's Magnetic Field

On Monday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a spacecraft to test the idea. Called T-Rex, short for Tether Technologies Rocket Experiment, the mission launched from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan at 2000 GMT (5 am on Tuesday, local time) on a suborbital flight that lasted about 10 minutes and reached a maximum altitude of 309 kilometres.

In principle, it is possible to propel an orbiting spacecraft without fuel by using a long piece of metal to interact with the magnetic field surrounding our planet. "You're essentially pushing against the Earth's magnetic field," says Les Johnson of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. While in space, the spacecraft unfurled the 300-metre-long "tether" – a 2.5-centimetre-wide metallic ribbon.

No comments:

Post a Comment