Solar Sail circles the Earth
Alright, it is almost beyond geekery, but since I didn’t even know about this I find this development more than a bit cool .
NASA, in an experiment to test a solar sail for practical use, successfully managed to deploy and have a solar sail circle the Earth, which is an impressive and very pragmatic step forward for making this a working technology for space travel.
I don’t know why, even though we’re talking slow speeds that would accelerate these vessels towards other planets and stars (and massive sails), it really kind of fires my imagination to imagine huge solar sailing vessels in the future, tacking towards distant stars.