IKAROS
IKAROS — JAXA's solar-sail demonstrator, launched on 20 May 2010 (UTC) with the Venus orbiter Akatsuki. In June 2010 it unfurled a square sail 14 m on a side, and in July JAXA confirmed that the pressure of sunlight on the sail was speeding it up: the first spacecraft to use a solar sail as its main propulsion in deep space. It steered by switching liquid-crystal panels on the sail, flew past Venus on 8 December 2010 at 80,800 km, and after years of hibernating on and off sent its last data on 21 May 2015. JAXA ended the search for it in 2025. (Its position here is representative.)
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- JAXA
- Launched
- May 20, 2010
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 0.726 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 0.344 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.13 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
IKAROS, the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun, was JAXA's test of a solar sail: a spacecraft pushed by the pressure of sunlight rather than by rocket fuel. It was launched on an H-IIA from Tanegashima on 20 May 2010 at 21:58 UTC, with the Venus orbiter Akatsuki and the student probe Shin'en. It unfolded its sail, a square 14 m on a side (20 m across the diagonal) carrying solar cells, and on 10 June 2010, about 7.7 million km from Earth, JAXA confirmed the sail was out and making power. On 9 July JAXA announced that sunlight was pushing it with a force of 1.12 millinewtons, and NASA's history Beyond Earth calls it the first spacecraft to use a solar sail as its main propulsion in deep space. It also steered by switching liquid-crystal panels on the sail, which changed how they reflected light. It passed Venus 80,800 km away on 8 December 2010 and went on round the Sun. It went into hibernation and woke again several times, and sent its last data on 21 May 2015, about 110 million km from Earth. JAXA ended the search for it on 15 May 2025.
- 2010IKAROS launches toward Venus on an H-IIA rocketLaunch
With Akatsuki and Shin'en.
- 2010Its sail is outDeployment
14 m on a side, confirmed 7.7 million km from Earth.
- 2010Pushed by sunlightMilestone
JAXA announces a thrust of 1.12 millinewtons from the pressure of light.
- 2015Last data receivedMission end
About 110 million km from Earth.
Images
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