NASA, along with other international space agencies, seem to be
pretty good at putting things into Earth’s orbit, but they are
not so good when it comes to bringing things down. As a result,
Earth’s orbit has been cluttered with space junk which has put
other spacecraft, include those which are manned, in danger of a
possible catastrophic collision. The solution may be in the form
of technology called a solar sail. A solar sail is a form of
spacecraft propulsion system which uses radiation pressure,
which can come from a star like our own Sun, or from an
artificial source like a laser. It also has the ability to act
as a parking brake to slow down spacecraft for de-orbit by
skimming the top of our atmosphere. Such technology has been
successfully tested by NASA this month on board a small
spacecraft called NanoSail-D. At first, NASA believed the
mission was a failure before it even began. That’s because the
small spacecraft was stuck inside its mothership called the
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