SpaceX has just launched the first French solar sail into space

Space year 2023 starts with a bang! A SpaceX Transporter 6 Falcon 9 rocket blasted off today from Cape Canaveral and sent more than 110 satellites into space at once! Among them, the French: we find a satellite of UnseenLabs Breton startup UnseenLabs marine monitoring fleetespecially the Gama Alpha experimental nanosatellite.

Gamma alpha cubes are 6U (1U = a volume unit corresponding to a side cube of 10 cm), weigh about ten kilograms and are the size of a shoebox. However, the engineers of the French start-up company Gamma have stocked up on a 73 square meter sun sail, an ultra-thin sail folded by hand. The Alpha mission is the first of the program, the purpose of which is above all to test the proper functioning of the highly detailed sail-deployment device and to test its effectiveness in low orbit.

alpha gamma mission. © Gamaspace, YouTube

The principle of a solar sail is quite unusual because even if there is no air in space, there can be wind. Not air particles charged by these winds but particles coming from the sun, ejected from its surface. By bouncing off the surface of the sail, these particles propel the satellite thanks to the action-action principle. This principle makes it possible to move forward – albeit slowly – without having to push, which is an ideal increase in the weight and longevity of the satellite.

After the Alpha mission, Gamma is planning another test mission in a higher orbit in 2025, then it will follow with a mission to Venus and others farther out, even beyond the solar system! If Alpha is the first French mission, the principle already has a lot of experience. Several other test missions around the world Already done.