Launched a Japanese ship with a solar sail

At 1:58 Moscow time, the Japanese space agency JAXA opened the era of space sailing ships. The H-IIA rocket launched from the Tanegashima cosmodrome launched into orbit Ikaros, a ship equipped with a 0.0075 mm thick membrane and dimensions of 14x14 meters. With the help of Ikaros, the features of the solar wind will be studied and ways to control this kind of ships will be worked out.

If all goes well, then in December of this year, the Akatsuki module will fly to the orbit of Venus and run simultaneously with Ikaros. The latter will study the composition of the atmosphere and the surface of the planet. Akatsuki will rotate above the planet at an altitude of 80 to 300 km and work for two years. At the same time, the study of Venus will be carried out in close cooperation with the Venus Express module from the European Space Agency.
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via jspec.jaxa.jp and lenta.ru