
Nasa to fund novel diffractive solar sails - bookofjoe
https://www.rit.edu/news/nasa-announces-funding-rit-professor-develop-novel-diffractive-solar-sails
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Tepix
I'm looking forward to The Planetary Society launching its Light Sail II
spacecraft on the next Falcon Heavy.

Btw, is there any technology for huge, super lightweight solar panels that
could also fullfil the role of a solar sail?

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andrewflnr
A few more details here from a couple links deeper:
[https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2019_Phase_...](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2019_Phase_I_Phase_II/Diffractive_Lightsails/)

From some other (low quality) sources, it looks like the force of a
diffractive sail comes from bending the light sideways, but I'm still not sure
how passing light through the sail can be _more_ efficient than reflecting it
from a moment conservation standpoint.

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DrJosiah
From the link you provide: it's about steering. They say that if you can spew
"exhaust" reflecting / refracting off the sail at 90 degrees to the incident
light, you can steer without reducing your sail area.

