On-Ground Experiment for Rotational Dynamics of Spinning Solar Sail
- Paper number
IAC-08.C1.1.9
- Author
Mr. Shinichi Inagawa, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
- Coauthor
Prof. Saburo Matunaga, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Solar sail is a key technology for future interplanetary cruising, because its large deployed sail can produce necessary thrust without propellant by the light pressure of the sun. In Japan, ISAS/JAXA is studying a spinning type solar sail: it consists of a main body in the center and a deployed membrane (sail) connecting to the main body with tethers. In this paper, this type of the spinning solar sail is considered. For the dynamic analysis, numerical simulations on the coupled dynamical behavior of the main body and the membrane after deployment has been conducted, and it is found that the main body's rotational motion and the membrane shape are dependent on the tether-connection methods between the main body and the membrane: this is one of important issues not only for the attitude control of the solar sail but also for the sunlight induced thrust control. The purposes of the paper are to investigate the rotational dynamics behavior of the main body and the membrane in hardware experiment on ground and, in particular, to evaluate the damping characteristics according to the connection methods between the main body and the membrane with tethers. The spinning solar sail is approximated to a two-rigidbody model: a main body part and a membrane-simulated part, and they are connected with tethers and can be rotated. An experiment system is developed according to this model. Size of the rotation parts of the system is about 2m*2m. The system can simulate microgravity environments in two dimensions using air floating devices to compensate the gravity, and the main body part has gas-thrusters for rotational control.?Fundamental experiments for rotational dynamics characteristics are carried out with the experiment system. The paper introduces the experimental setup in detail and discusses the results of the experiments by comparing with ones of numerical simulations.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.C1.1.9.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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