During a parabolic flight over Europe, a small slab of graphene aerogel floated in near-weightlessness while a laboratory laser fired into it. The material moved. Not because of a chemical reaction or ...

For years, physicists have been trying to perfect a way to catapult space probes at a fifth the speed of light. One team is flagging an important section of the blueprint. Monisha Ravisetti was a ...

Laser pushed sails—ultrathin need reflective structures that are square meters but weight a gram. If the sails and the payload each weigh a gram, such a spacecraft could accelerate to one fifth of the ...

Spacecraft could fly to distant stars using sails with surfaces similar to those of CDs and DVDs to help them stay centered on laser beams, a new study finds. Conventional rockets driven by chemical ...