MOSCOW. Aug 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The launch of a spacecraft with a 'solar sail' is scheduled for late November 2004, Lidia Avdeyeva, press secretary of the Lavochkin research and production association, said on Wednesday.
"The goal of the flight is to confirm possibility of controlling the spacecraft's movement by changing solar light pressure and parameters of its orbit," Avdeyeva told Interfax- Military News Agency.
The project was not codenamed 'solar sail' accidentally, she stressed. "It is the solar sail comprising eight petals with a total area of 600 square meters (75 square meters each) that accumulates sunray pressure and ensures the spacecraft's movement," she said.
According to Avdeyeva, the project involves Lavochkin, the U.S. Planetary Society, the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academician Makeyev design bureau, and other organizations.