wow- they canb detext pressure that small? (or the change from it?)
That’s pretty amazing
It also means it will eventuall slow the craft down and stop it.
Does anyone know what the lifetime of the power supply is?
Maybe at the time scales involved, the power module (nuclear, which was assisted by photocells when the craft was near the sun, but no more) will have long petered out before directional emission of infrared photons could significantly slow the craft let alone stop it.
I’m cudgeling my brain without success to remember the name of the little physics toy that had an assembly of two to four vanes, painted white on one side and black on the other, mounted to pivot in a nearly evacuated glass bulb. Sunlight would make the vane assembly turn as the black side of the vanes became warmer than the white side. And yet it wasn’t light pressure that achieved this, but differential between how the residual gas in the bulb was warmed and set in motion at the surfaces of the vanes.