Contact
June Malone
Media Relations Department
(256) 544-0034
june.malone@msfc.nasa.go

Media Advisory: 00-151

Attention: News Department
Audio from NASA
Available now via phone or Internet

NASA charts course to sail to the stars on largest spacecraft ever

• Future NASA missions will send spacecraft toward destinations beyond the solar system.
• The interstellar probe would be the biggest, fastest spacecraft ever.
• Using thin reflective sails made of composite materials, it would span 440 yards -- twice the diameter of the Louisiana Superdome.
• The spacecraft would use sunlight for propulsion and later missions might use microwave beams or laser beams.
• It would move fast -- 58 miles per second, more than 10 times faster than the Space Shuttle’s orbit speed of 5 miles per second, or New York to Los Angeles in less than a minute.
• The challenging, unprecedented 15-year journey could begin as early as 2010.
• Team members from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are working to make space sails a reality.

What:	Sound bites–varying lengths
How:	Call (256) 544-6397 (NEWS)

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