From: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast04oct_1.htm

**...The magnetosphere not only shields us from solar radiation but it also acts something like a solar sail," says Dennis Gallagher, a space physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The solar wind pushes on the magnetosphere constantly, but fortunately Earth is just too massive to blow away."

What might happen, though, if we created a magnetic bubble around something much smaller than the Earth -- like a spacecraft? Could it ride the solar wind from planet to planet? Gallagher and his colleagues think so.

"A 15 km-wide miniature magnetosphere one astronomical unit from the Sun would feel 1 to 3 Newtons of force from the solar wind," says Gallagher, "That's enough to accelerate a 200 kg spacecraft from a dead stop to 80 km/s (180,000 mph) in only 3 months.

"If we launched a space probe now equipped with such a bubble it would easily overtake Voyager and become the first spacecraft from Earth to cross the boundary into interstellar space."

The ingenious notion to use miniature magnetospheres as a form of advanced propulsion was first suggested by Robert Winglee at the University of Washington. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts awarded Winglee a Phase I Revolutionary Advanced Concepts grant two years ago followed by a Phase II contract, and already the idea has leapt off the drawing board and into the lab...**

M2P2 doesn't have to be 15 km wide nor be used as a propulsion system. It should be a great sheild even if it turns out to be a poor solar sail.

--Chris Vancil