The european solar sail deployment demonstration mission
- Paper number
IAC-06-A3.4.07
- Author
Dr. Manfred Leipold, Kayser-Threde GmbH, Germany
- Coauthor
Mr. C. Widani, Kayser-Threde GmbH, Germany
- Coauthor
Mr. Peter Groepper, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Christoph Sickinger, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany
- Coauthor
Dr. Franz Lura, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany
- Year
2006
- Abstract
Solar sail technology holds the promise of enhancing the interplanetary transportation infrastructure for low-cost space exploration missions in the new millennium, by exploiting the freely available, space-pervading resource of solar radiation pressure for primary propulsion. Although the basic idea behind solar sailing appears simple, challenging engineering problems have to be solved. A joint effort for the pre-development and demonstration of the critical technologies was initiated in 1998 on a co-funding basis between ESA and DLR. As a first major milestone in terms of demonstration, a 20m x 20m breadboard model was developed, manufactured and tested in 1999. It demonstrated the feasibility of a fully deployable lightweight solar sail structure in a simulated 0-g environment. Following the successful ground demonstration, a low-cost technology demonstration mission to validate sail deployment in Low Earth Orbit is the logical next step. Kayser-Threde GmbH in cooperation with DLR as well as various European industrial subcontractors carried out a Phase B effort under contract to ESA which resulted in the detailed design of the sailcraft, the sail deployment mechanisms and the validation flight mission scenario. A light weight solar sail structure of 20m x 20m is planned to be manufactured, stowed in a compact deployment module for launch on a low-cost Russian rocket, and is to be deployed in a 450km circular orbit. Deployment shall be observed with a suite of on-board instruments including a camera. After completion of the deployment experiment and observation of the sail, the sailcraft will decay in the upper atmosphere within several weeks. The paper summarizes the solar sail design, the progress made in the area of deployable solar sail composite structure booms, sail manufacturing, the on-board electronics and sensor suite to observe the deployment, as well as the mission scenario and analysis. During Phase B of the project several breadboard activities were carried out in order to upgrade the design of the previous project phases, leading also to a revised design of the central deployment mechanisms used to deploy the booms and the sails. By making use of this innovative means of low-thrust propulsion, extended exploration missions in our solar system which require a Delta-v of several tens of kilometers per second would become possible. This could enable missions which exceed the capabilities of even advanced electric propulsion systems. This capability could be used for missions towards the Sun to access a circular, solar polar orbit at 0.3 to 0.5AU. Despite the large distances to the Sun and the reduced solar radiation pressure, fast missions to the outer edge of our solar system also belong to the promising mission applications of solar sails. In order to realize such a mission, the sailcraft would first perform a so-called “solar photonic assist”, approaching the Sun to less than 0.5AU thus exploiting the increased solar radiation pressure, to pick up enough orbital energy to enter a hyperbolic solar system escape trajectory. Utilizing such low-thrust trajectories a sailcraft could probe the outer heliosphere, in particular the termination shock, and penetrate the heliopause to reach interstellar space within a reasonable flight time.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-A3.4.07.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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