In April, a next-generation solar sail technology – known as the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System – will launch aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand. The technology could advance future space travel and expand our understanding of our Sun and solar system
What is the solar sail concept?
A solar sail spacecraft has large reflective sails that capture the momentum of light from the Sun and use that momentum to push the spacecraft forward. The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission is one example of this technology in action
How big is a solar sail?
The unfurled solar sail is approximately 30 feet (about 9 meters) on a side. Since solar radiation pressure is small, the solar sail must be large to efficiently generate
What powers a solar sail?
Solar Sails. ♦ Solar sails use photon “pressure” or. force on thin, lightweight reflective sheet to produce thrust. Sails can open up new regions of the solar system to accessibility for important science missions, with no propellants required
Do solar sails use fuel?
Solar sails use sunlight instead of rocket fuel for propulsion. They are one of the few technologies that could be used for interstellar travel
How fast can a solar sail fly?
By performing a slingshot maneuver in the vicinity of the sun, just ~2-5 solar radii distant from the sun, solar sails can propel light-weight cubesat class spacecraft to near-relativistic speeds, >0.1% of the speed of light (>300 km/s or >60AU/year characteristic velocities
What was the first solar sail?
IKAROS
IKAROS is the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar sail technology in interplanetary space. The craft’s name is an allusion to the legendary Icarus (Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος, Ikaros), who flew close to the Sun on wings made of bird-feathers and wax
What is the difference between solar sail and electric sail?
Compared to a reflective solar light sail, another propellantless deep space propulsion system, the electric solar wind sail could continue to accelerate at greater distances from the Sun, still developing thrust as it cruises toward the outer planets
Where were solar sails invented?
Louis Friedman, then at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led a project to try the first solar sail flight. Halley’s Comet was to make its closest approach to Earth in 1986, and NASA conceived the exciting idea of propelling a probe via solar sail to rendezvous with the comet
Could solar sails reach Mars in 26 days?
According to a paper recently submitted to the journal Acta Astronautica, detailed computer simulations show tiny, incredibly lightweight solar sails made with aerographite could travel to Mars in just 26 days—compare that to conventional rocketry time estimates of between 7-to-9 months
Who created the solar sail?
Solar sailing was first considered by Johannes Kepler in 1610, when he wrote about a sail in space that might one day capture sunlight the way a boat sail catches the wind. However, the practical demonstration that this could actually work happened much later.
Has a solar sail been tested?
The first solar sail to successfully fly was the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun (IKAROS) spacecraft in 2010. Later missions have included NASA’s NanoSail-D and the Planetary Society’s Lightsail 1 and Lightsail 2 missions
Solar sails use the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, angling toward or away from the Sun so that photons bounce off the reflective sail to push a spacecraft. This eliminates heavy propulsion systems and could enable longer duration and lower-cost missions. Although mass is reduced, solar sails have been limited by the material and structure of the booms, which act much like a sailboat’s mast. But NASA is about to change the sailing game for the future
Sailor
The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System demonstration uses a twelve-unit (12U) CubeSat built by NanoAvionics to test a new composite boom made from flexible polymer and carbon fiber materials that are stiffer and lighter than previous boom designs. The mission’s primary objective is to successfully demonstrate new boom deployment, but once deployed, the team also hopes to prove the sail’s performance.
Like a sailboat turning to capture the wind, the solar sail can adjust its orbit by angling its sail. After evaluating the boom deployment, the mission will test a series of maneuvers to change the spacecraft’s orbit and gather data for potential future missions with even larger sails.
“Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today’s small spacecraft. Solar sails need very large, stable, and lightweight booms that can fold down compactly,” said Keats Wilkie, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “This sail’s booms are tube-shaped and can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure into a small package while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes.”
Enabling Future Solar Sails
Through NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program, successful deployment and operation of the solar sail’s lightweight composite booms will prove the capability and open the door to larger scale missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond
Everyone knows that solar energy is free and almost limitless here on Earth. The same is true for spacecraft operating in the inner Solar System. But in space, the Sun can do more than provide electrical energy; it also emits an unending stream of solar wind.
Solar sails can harness that wind and provide propulsion for spacecraft. NASA is about to test a new solar sail design that can make solar sails even more effective
Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today’s small spacecraft.”Keats Wilkie, ACS3 principal investigator, NASA
The hope is that the new technologies verified on this spacecraft will inspire others to use them in ways we haven’t even considered.”Alan Rhodes, ACS3 lead systems engineer, NASA’s Ames Research Center
The Sun will continue burning for billions of years, so we have a limitless source of propulsion. Instead of launching massive fuel tanks for future missions, we can launch larger sails that use “fuel” already available,” said Rhodes. “We will demonstrate a system that uses this abundant resource to take those next giant steps in exploration and science.”
It was stuff dreamed of by the most imaginative science fiction writers who let their imagination run away with them. However, those dreamed up devices lying around in dusty corners and bookshelves are actually being manufactured now and one, NASA’s solar sail, is all ready to make its debut and prove that the technology is viable. This amazing instrument shows, like no other, that ideas rule the world like never before.
This new solar sail, known as the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, is expected to be launched from Mahia in New Zealand aboard Rocket Labs Electron rocket. Among the two most sought after results from this experiment is whether the tech is viable for future space travel and if it will increase the sum of knowledge about the powers of the Sun.
A KID’S DREAM
By the time Johnson was a teenager attending Coles Middle School in Ashland, Kentucky, he already knew he wanted to become a NASA scientist. Like many of the engineers who work in NASA labs across the United States, Johnson has always been a proud science fiction nerd. In high school he became obsessed with the idea of laser sails after reading the novel The Mote in God’s Eye written by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven in 1974, which describes a sail that uses photons as a thrust force to move a spaceship over vast distances at extremely high speeds. “I thought the idea of laser-driven lightsails was amazing, but I never dreamed I would get to work on anything like that,” he says
NO FUEL NEEDED
Unlike current chemical rockets—which burn fuel to escape Earth’s gravity—or ion engines—which use electrical fields to turn a noble gas like xenon into a steady stream of electrons that push a ship through the vacuum of space—solar sails don’t require any fuel at all. They only need sunlight to work
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Wow, that is so cool! Thanks for the info Satyam
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