This is John Bachelor, conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman who keeps the website

behind the black about the heroic engineers in space science.

Whenever there's a problem, they come forward and at first it seems

imponderable, maybe the end of the mission. And then, here again is an example, a

solar sail deployed by NASA was not opening properly. The puzzle, the solution, the

engineers to the rescue. Sail on solar sail, engineers backing you up more of this later in the week engineering

success with space engineering with Bob Zimmerman.

NASA launched a solar sail deployment engineering test recently.

This solar sail was to send a slightly large cube-sat, about four feet in size or in square footage and it's very small

but within it it's got a six eight hundred and sixty foot square foot solar sail.

It would deploy this gigantic solar cell from this small satellite.

And that was tested deployment technology and then test solar cell technology.

Solar sails would fly like sailing ships

through the solar system using sunlight.

And so they have some technical problems getting the solar

sale deployed, but they've solved those problems

and it is now completely deployed.