Explorers

At its 1995 convention, the Space Frontier Foundation recognized this episode for exemplifying "the most imaginative use of a vehicle to travel in space," and awarded the episode the "Best Vision of the Future" award. The award was presented by Robert Staehle, the world's foremost expert on solar sails.

Captain Sisko speculates that the rapid journey to Cardassia is made possible by the solar sails capturing faster-than-light tachyon particles, in addition to the expected solar wind, thereby achieving "warp speeds." However, even in the universe according to Star Trek, no ship can exceed the speed of light in normal space. Warp drive operates in part by creating a warp field, or subspace field or bubble, around a ship, which bypasses the speed-of-light limitation. However, the Bajoran-style sail-ship did not have a warp field generator. Therefore, even if the sails had also been able to capture tachyon particles, it would not have been able to achieve warp speed.

Featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: What You Leave Behind (1999)