Related papers: Solar sail propulsion: enabling new capabilities f…
Solar sail technology is ready to be deployed in a satellite mission carrying a science-grade magnetometer. In preparation for such a mission, it is essential to characterize the interactions between the sail and the ambient plasma that…
Solar flares are the largest energy-release events in the Solar System, allowing us to study fundamental physical phenomena under extreme conditions. Those include magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration, radiation transport, and…
The first reports on the "Space Magnetic Sail" concept appeared more 30 years ago. During the period since some hundreds of research and scientific works have been published, including hundreds of research report by professors at major…
Near Earth Asteroids have a possibility of impacting with the Earth and always have a thread on the Earth. This paper proposes a way of changing the trajectory of the asteroid to avoid the impaction. Solar sail evolving in a H-reversal…
Radiation pressure afforded by natural broadband sunlight upon a transmissive diffractive sail is theoretically and numerically investigated. A grating period of one micrometer is found to convert 83% of the solar black body spectrum into…
Solar Orbiter, the first mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme and a mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, will explore the Sun and heliosphere from close up and out of the ecliptic plane. It was launched…
The origin of fuel cell technology has a notable connection to the history of spaceflight, having been used in remarkable programs such as Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. With the constant growth of the electric propulsion technology…
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) techniques have developed rapidly within the past few decades. Using UAVs provides benefits in numerous applications such as site surveying, communication systems, parcel delivery, target tracking, etc. The…
A multi-institutional, multi-national science team will soon submit a NASA proposal to build a constellation of spacecraft to fly into the near-Earth solar wind in a swarm spanning a multitude of scales in order to obtain critically needed…
The High Inclination Solar Mission (HISM) is a concept for an out-of-the-ecliptic mission for observing the Sun and the heliosphere. The mission profile is largely based on the Solar Polar Imager concept: initially spiraling in to a 0.48 AU…
We propose to use metasurfaces as a mean of controlling radiation pressure for increasing the range of motions of spacecraft solar sails. Specifically, we present a theoretical study of different electromagnetic field configurations, and…
The great success of Helioseismology resides in the remarkable progress achieved in the understanding of the structure and dynamics of the solar interior. This success mainly relies on the ability to conceive, implement, and operate…
Theoretical aspects of a solar sail material degradation are presented when the solar electromagnetic and corpuscular forms of radiation were considered as sources of degradation. The analysis of the interaction of two components of solar…
A central question surrounding possible human exploration of Mars is whether crewed missions can be supported by available technologies using in situ resources. Here, we show that photovoltaics-based power systems would be adequate and…
Interest in the exploration of, and the establishment of a human settlement, on Mars is rapidly growing. To achieve this, rapid transit will be required to bring crucial cargo. Current missions to Mars take 150 days, which would be too long…
The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) enables resolved imaging and spectroscopy of nearby terrestrial exoplanets, but useful science begins only after a spacecraft reaches roughly 650-900 astronomical units (AU). A 20 yr lower-bound trip to…
Major progress has been made in helio- and asteroseismology in recent years. In helioseismology, much of the activity has been in local helioseismology. However, the recent revision of solar surface abundances, and the resulting problems in…
Research efforts that require observations of high solar activity, such as multiwavelength studies of large solar flares and CMEs, must contend with the 11-year solar cycle to a degree unparalleled by other segments of heliophysics. While…
The recent explosive growth of small satellite operations driven primarily from an academic or pedagogical need, has demonstrated the viability of commercial-off-the-shelf technologies in space. They have also leveraged and shown the need…
The electric solar wind sail (E-sail) propellantless propulsion device uses long, charged metallic tethers to tap momentum from the solar wind to produce spacecraft propulsion. If flying through planetary or moon eclipse, the long E-sail…