“Lightfoil” could enable spacecraft to use Sun’s rays to fly

Nature : Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York have demonstrated the optical analog of an airfoila “lightfoil” that generates lift when passing through laser light, writes Jon Cartwright for Nature. The principles are similar: Both require the pressure to be greater on one side than the other, which generates a force, or lift, in that direction. With the lightfoil, the pressure comes from light rather than air. The group, whose results were published yesterday in Nature Photonics , believes that lightfoils could one day be used to maneuver objects in the vacuum of outer space using only the Sun’s rays.