NYTimes.com: About a year from now, if all goes well, a box called LightSail-1, about the size of a loaf of bread, will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth.
There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails (see left image for an artist’s rendition of LightSail-1 by Rick Sternbach. Credit: Planetary Society) as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars. LightSail-1 will sail only a few hours and gain a few miles in altitude.But those hours will mark a milestone in the quest to navigate the cosmos on winds of starlight the way sailors for thousands of years have navigated the ocean on the winds of the Earth.
