Exploring the Kuiper Belt with sun-diving solar sails

Paper number

IAC-18,A7,2,5,x47547

Author

Ms. Elena Ancona, Germany, Telespazio VEGA Deutschland GmbH

Coauthor

Prof. Roman Ya. Kezerashvili, United States, New York City College of Technology, The City University of New York

Coauthor

Prof. Gregory Matloff, United States, New York City College of Technology

Year

2018

Abstract

The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region extending ~35-50 AU from the Sun that is populated by volatile-rich objects including the dwarf planet Pluto and $>$ 100,000 bodies larger than 100 kilometers across and as many as a trillion smaller comets. After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, the next discovery of a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) was in 1992. The NASA New Horizons Probe encountered Pluto and its satellites in 2015 and is in route to a second Kuiper Belt destination [1]. It is possible to survey many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) using a single launch. Many wafer-scale spacecraft, each equipped with solar sails, could be unfurled from a single interplanetary bus at the perihelion of that craft’s solar orbit. Each wafer-scale spacecraft would carry a scientific payload and would be directed to intersect one or more KBOs. Perihelion temperature effects and trajectory corrections necessary to overcome warped space-time in the Sun’s gravity well are calculated follow Refs. [2] and [3], respectively. The proposed scenario is the following: the sails are carried as a payload to a relatively small heliocentric distance (0.1 - 0.2 AU); once at the perihelion, the sails are deployed. Besides electromagnetic propulsion due to the solar radiation, another mechanism could be convenient: thermal desorption, a physical process of mass loss which can provide additional thrust as heating liberates atoms, embedded on the surface of a solar sail [4,5]. Therefore, sails experience additional propulsive force due to the thermal desorption.  


References:


[1] G.L. Matloff, Deep-space Probes. To the Outer Solar System and beyond, second ed., Proxis Publishing, Chischester, UK, 2001.

[2] E. Ancona and R.Ya. Kezerashvili, Temperature restrictions for materials used in aerospace industry for the near-Sun orbits, Acta Astronautica 140 (2017) 565–569.

[3] R.Ya. Kezerashvili and J. F. Vazquez-Poritz, Escape trajectories of solar sails and general relativity. Physics Letters B 681 (2009) 387–390.

[4] G. Benford and J. Benford, Acceleration of sails by thermal desorption of coatings, Acta Astronautica 56 (2005) 593-599.

[5] R.Ya. Kezerashvili, Space exploration with a solar sail coated by materials that undergo thermal desorption, Acta Astronautica 117 (2015) 231–237.

Abstract document

IAC-18,A7,2,5,x47547.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-18,A7,2,5,x47547.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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