The Gama company intends to revolutionize long-distance space transport thanks to the deployment of its solar sail.
Gama’s solar sail is similar to “a gigantic survival blanket of about 75 square meters that we deploy in space to push our payloads”, explains on the set of Tech&Co Louis de Goüyon Matignon, co-founder of Gama .
With this project, Gama wants to revolutionize long-distance space transport thanks to its solar sail. This one, no thicker than 50 times the thinness of a hair, “will reflect the light like a mirror”. By bouncing, the light imparts an acceleration to the entire space object. “This acceleration, we use it to transport our scientific instruments,” says the co-founder.
Through this project, Gama is reinventing space propulsion because there is, at this very moment, a revolution in the field of nanosatellites. The solar sail aims to target, not low orbit, but rather Mars and Venus, or even “the outer solar system”, enthuses Louis de Goüyon Matignon.
Sail unfurled in the spring
Tuesday, January 3 marked the launch of Gama’s first satellite into space with SpaceX. It was deployed at an altitude of 530 kilometers. “We have received the first communications with the satellite, which for the moment is going at a speed of 28.00 km/h”. The solar sail will be deployed in the spring. “This mission also allows us to reassure our investors”.
Gama masters photonic propulsion, but above all the deployment of super surfaces in space “and today this is a quality that is rarely found in certain societies”. We can imagine many things with a solar sail such as telecommunications, antennas, deorbiting.
The company, created in 2020, employs around twenty people in the Paris region. For the moment, the solar sail will remain in low orbit because it is complicated to leave it because of the residual atmosphere. The next mission will take place in 2025 to fly higher and then, eventually, aim for Venus or Mars.
