Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own, sits 4.37 light-years away. At the speed Voyager 1 travels, reaching it ...

In the frozen outskirts of the solar system, a reddish dwarf planet orbits in silence. Known as Sedna, it is so distant that one trip around the Sun takes more than 11,000 years. For much of that time ...

A laser hit the tiny black cube, and it lurched forward almost at once. That split-second jump, caught during a zero-gravity arc aboard a parabolic flight, points to a strange and promising idea for ...

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 ...

Solar sails have some major advantages over traditional propulsion methods—most notably, they don't use any propellant. But, how exactly do they turn? In traditional sailing, a ship's captain can ...

For most spacecraft, traveling through the vacuum of space requires fuel. NASA's experimental Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) is different, though. This vehicle could help NASA learn how ...