Solar Sail: A New Way To Travel Through Out The Space
- Paper number
IAC-07-D2.5.02
- Author
Mr. Andrea Tromba, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Alberto Torasso, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Guido Ridolfi, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Solar sail: A new way to travel through out the space M. Adamo, D. Durì, L. Mainini, G. Ridolfi, A. Torasso, A. Tromba Aerospace School of Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy Abstract This abstract would introduce a mission proposal already assessed by a team of ESA’s experts as one of the most interesting for the development of new spacecraft technologies. It has been presented within the ambit of the ESA’s Educational Program Young Engineer Satellite (YES) 3, which has the aim to establish a tightened collaboration between young engineers and European aerospace poles. The mission statement is: Students and ESA’s cooperating partners shall within 5 years deploy in space and control a solar sail by performing a controlled change in orbit, and evaluate its performance. Solar radiation can be used to propel and control spacecrafts equipped with a large reflective surface. A number of studies have been already carried out about the opportunity to propel spacecrafts by the thrust obtained through the momentum variation due to the impact of photons against the solar sail surface. But until now no solar sails have been successfully deployed as primary propulsion system. Our proposal has the aim to carry out the first step for a new way, clean and cheaper, to travel through out the space. The solar sail configuration expected consists of a craft body holding payload and control systems. The sail will be a unique square surface with multiple connections to booms. The spacecraft shall reach a down to dusk orbit with an altitude such as to avoid problems induced by residual atmospheric drag. Following the booms and sail deployment shall start: the booms mechanical extension shall drag the sail segments to deploy the entirely surface in one time, to avoid asymmetry of load. When the sail mirror will be completely deployed the drive system shall automatically carry out the sail tilting to orient the trust vector in order to keep the desired orbit. The attitude control system shall be able to perform automatically the sail tilting to change direction and magnitude of the net force, in order to rise or to fall the orbit, according to the input from the ground. The spacecraft payload shall consist of a camera, accelerometers, piezoelectric and temperature sensors, in order to evaluate the solar sail performance. Finally the module shall join in a reentry path and to end its mission burning in the atmosphere.
- Abstract document