Solar Sail Propulsion by 2050: An Enabling Capability for Heliophysics Missions
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
2023-01-05 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Abstract
Solar sails enable missions to observe the solar environment from unique vantage points, such as sustained observations away from the Sun-Earth line; sub-L1 station keeping; high inclination solar orbits; Earth polar-sitting and polar-viewing observatories; fast transit missions to study heliosphere to interstellar medium transition, as well as missions of interest across a broad user community. Recent and planned demonstration missions make this technology ready for use on near-term science missions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2301.01297,
title = {Solar Sail Propulsion by 2050: An Enabling Capability for Heliophysics Missions},
author = {Les Johnson and Nathan Barnes and Matteo Ceriotti and Thomas Y. Chen and Artur Davoyan and Louis Friedman and Darren Garber and Roman Kezerashvili and Ken Kobayashi and Greg Matloff and Colin McInnes and Pat Mulligan and Grover Swartzlander and Slava G. Turyshev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.01297},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Heliophysics 2050 White Paper