Aft view of a lightship
A lightship emerges from the Bajoran wormhole
A Bajoran lightship was the type of early spacegoing vessel that utilized solar sail powered space flight. The vessels were used by ancient Bajorans as early as the 16th century, and would continue to be used by the Bajorans as late as the 21st century. (DS9: "Explorers", "Accession")
Prior to the Fall of their First Republic, Bajorans first travelled from Bajor to Cardassia, and established first contact between the two worlds. For many years the Cardassians disputed this claim because they refused to admit that the Bajorans had achieved interstellar flight before they had.
After studying the ancient Bajoran texts, Commander Sisko, was intrigued to build his own lightship in 2371. He and his son, Jake, would later successfully emulate the journey from Deep Space 9 to Cardassia, making use of the natural tachyon eddys and confirming the ancient texts. Upon their arrival, they encountered three Galor-class warships, lead by Gul Dukat, who revealed the discovery of the ancient crash site of the original ship, and would celebrate Sisko's arrival with a light display. (DS9: "Explorers")
In the Bajoran year 9174, nearly five-hundred years after the first lightships sailed, Akorem Laan, a noted Bajoran poet, disappeared in the Denorios belt aboard a lightship following an ion storm. He would reemerge from the Bajoran wormhole in 2372. (DS9: "Accession")
Background
The set of the Bajoran lightship
Illustrator Jim Martin describes the idea behind the lightship's design as a "Bajoran turtle with gossamer wings".
The lightship the Siskos build and use to make their voyage is similar in many ways to a wind-powered vessel, both in how it compares to starships normally seen on Star Trek and in its design. The idea as described in the episode is that the ship's sails absorb solar rays and "ride" the current, much as sailing vessels once rode trade winds.
Additionally, many of the design similarities were intentional on the part of production designer Herman Zimmerman and Martin. Zimmerman, an avid sailor, even brought in some real sailing equipment, which can be seen in the background at various points in "Explorers".
John Knoll at Industrial Light and Magic rendered the CGI model of the lightships.
The computer graphics for the sails seen in "Explorers" are very similar to the Son'a collector's sails seen in Star Trek: Insurrection, but their use is quite different.
