Space yachts and Russian Submarines

Robin McKie and Nick Paton Walsh report from Moscow:

A spacecraft that flies on sunbeams is about to begin its travels across the solar system. A group of American and Russian scientists are preparing to launch a probe with giant, wafer-thin plastic sails that can catch sunlight just as a yacht's sails fill with wind.

Cosmos-1 has been designed to tack across space without using rockets and could form the forerunner of a network of solar observatories that would hover over the sun to provide early warnings of disruptive magnetic storms, or deliver instruments to remote space stations and planetary exploration teams.

The probe, to be launched from a Russian nuclear missile submarine, is made up of a fan of eight 15-metre sails, each thinner than a dustbin bag but stiffened and coated with mirror material.

Sailing thru space has been in the sci-fi books forever, but maybe it is finally going to happen.

It's in the Observer: Click here: The Observer International Space yacht rides to stars on rays of sunlight