Sailing in space with the light of the Sun, like a sailboat on the oceans with the wind, is about to become a reality. Three years after its creation, the Ile-de-France start-up Gama launched its first mission to test this non-polluting mode of propulsion. On January 3, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried 114 small satellites, including Gama Alpha, which was launched into orbit 538 kilometers from Earth. The first communications were successfully established a few days later.
Within three months, in the spring, this shoebox-sized satellite should open, releasing the web it carries. The maneuver promises to be delicate, due to the size of the wing that will come out of it: 73.3 square meters folded in origami, weighing 400 grams, for a thickness of 2.5 microns, fifty times less than a hair. Once deployed, this sail will use photonic propulsion, that is to say the pressure produced by the photons emitted by the Sun, when they come into contact with a reflective surface. After a few turns around the Earth, the satellite will then be desorbed.
“We are looking more for customers than shareholders”
Two other missions are scheduled for 2024 and for 2026. Gama Beta will test the sail at an altitude of 1,200 kilometers, taking it from point A to point B. The third expedition will go more towards the “deep space”, the distant cosmos, hopes Louis de Gouyon Matignon, one of the three founders of Gama, with Thibaud Elzière and Andrew Nutter. “To the Moon and why not to Mars or Venus”he imagines.
The solar sailboat will be able to carry observation equipment, weighing a total of 1 to 2 kilos, for scientific missions. “We are looking more for customers than shareholders, ready to pay to take pictures of Venus or brush against asteroids”explains the 30-year-old.
This new means of propulsion is of interest to the Marseille shipowner CMA CGM, which has ambitions in the space sector, having strengthened its stake in the French satellite operator Eutelsat. The solar sail “could theoretically accelerate to speeds never before achieved by man-made objects”, emphasizes the maritime transport group, which contributes nearly 10% to this mission, at a total cost of 2.3 million euros.
Welcome support. “As there are no immediate applications for solar sailing, we need a significant amount of sponsorship to move forward”, recognizes Louis de Gouyon Matignon, not hesitating to make an analogy with “the Venetian, Spanish or Portuguese crowns which financed expeditions to the New World”. Hence the name of the start-up, a tribute to the navigator Vasco de Gama.