--- title: NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 description: Find out why NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is one of the best inventions of 2024 canonical: https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-10-30T11:18:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T11:54:35.482Z article:section: Business og:title: NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 og:description: Find out why NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System made this year's list og:url: https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt124170335ea4e179/698a8a1cd0753335cee75ddb/Advanced-Composite-Solar-Sail-System-best-inventions.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 twitter:description: Find out why NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System made this year's list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt124170335ea4e179/698a8a1cd0753335cee75ddb/Advanced-Composite-Solar-Sail-System-best-inventions.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 30, 2024 # A Photon-Propelled Spacecraft by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/) ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large  Overview of the solar panels test of the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) spacecraft in the Ames Integration Facility. Overview of the solar panels test of the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) spacecraft in the Ames Integration Facility.Brandon Torres—NASA Ames Research Center Spacecraft have always been expensive to launch, largely because of the weight of the fuel they need once in orbit. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail experiment, launched in April, aims to fix that. Instead of using chemical engines to maneuver and accelerate, it uses a solar sail—a large metallic film that catches photons from the sun much the way a cloth sail catches wind. The spacecraft, about the size of a microwave oven, unfurled its sail—which billowed out to 860 square feet—in late August. Keats Wilkie, NASA’s principal investigator for the experiment, calls the mission an “opportunity to gain experience controlling and flying a working solar sail at a small scale.” These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/"},"headline":"NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024","datePublished":"2024-10-30T11:18:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T11:54:35.482Z","description":"Find out why NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is one of the best inventions of 2024","url":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/","keywords":["Tech","E-Commerce","list","franchise","Magazine","best inventions"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt124170335ea4e179/698a8a1cd0753335cee75ddb/Advanced-Composite-Solar-Sail-System-best-inventions.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"creator":"Jeffrey Kluger","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt124170335ea4e179/698a8a1cd0753335cee75ddb/Advanced-Composite-Solar-Sail-System-best-inventions.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2024/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system/","name":"NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: the 200 Best Inventions of 2024"}}]}] ```