Related papers: The Sun Diver: Combining solar sails with the Ober…
Solar sails offer a promising solution for fuel free propulsion, enabling novel mission profiles and deeper space exploration. While reaction wheels are standard for spacecraft attitude control, the large moment of inertia of solar sails…
Recently, we witnessed how the synergy of small satellite technology and solar sailing propulsion enables new missions. Together, small satellites with lightweight instruments and solar sails offer affordable access to deep regions of the…
In this paper it is presented the concept and design of a new type of spacecraft that could be used to make the first manned interstellar travel. Solar one would integrate three near-term technologies, namely: compact nuclear fusion…
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…
The authors describe the general motion of radiation-pushed sails accelerated near the speed of light with directed energy propulsion. Practical applications of the model are also given, including the interstellar flyby mission to the Alpha…
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…
In the solar atmosphere, jets are prevalent and they are significant for the mass and energy transport. Here we conduct numerical simulations to investigate the mass and energy contributions of the recently observed high-speed jets to the…
The Magnetic Sail is a space propulsion system that utilizes the interaction between solar wind particles and an artificial dipole magnetic field generated by a spacecraft's coil to produce thrust without the need for additional plasma or…
This paper presents a novel methodology for solving the time-optimal trajectory optimization problem for interplanetary solar-sail missions using successive convex programming. Based on the non-convex problem, different convexification…
General relativity can have a significant impact on the long-range escape trajectories of solar sails deployed near the sun. Spacetime curvature in the vicinity of the sun can cause a solar sail traveling from 0.01 AU to 2550 AU to be…
Advanced solar sailing has been an increasingly attractive propulsion system for highly non-Keplerian orbits. Three new applications of the orbital angular momentum reversal (H-reversal) trajectories using solar sails are presented in this…
New means of interstellar travel are now being considered by various research teams, assuming lightweight spaceships to be accelerated via either laser or solar radiation to a significant fraction of the speed of light (c). We recently…
Solar-powered electric propulsion systems can operate in multiple modes and their operation is coupled to the power generated by solar arrays. However, the power produced by the solar arrays is a function of the solar array size and…
NASA has been considering a solar sail that would accelerate a craft to a high velocity (~ 14 AU/yr) by the time it reached 5 AU. Then the sail would be dropped and the craft would coast alone to deep space. We propose that the sail be…
Gravity-Assisted maneuvers have been used as a technique to reduce fuel consumption in deep space missions for several decades now. It opened the doors of the exterior solar system. The literature shows those results, as well as new…
Spacecraft kinematics, peak perihelion temperature and space environment effects during solar-radiation-pressure acceleration for a beryllium hollow-body interstellar solar sail inflated with hydrogen fill gas are investigated. We…
The direct detection of sub-GeV dark matter particles is hampered by their low energy deposits. If the maximum deposit allowed by kinematics falls below the energy threshold of a direct detection experiment, it is unable to detect these…
The electric solar wind sail produces thrust by centrifugally spanned high voltage tethers interacting with the solar wind protons. The sail attitude can be controlled and attitude maneuvers are possible by tether voltage modulation…
A propulsion concept in which a spacecraft interacts with high-velocity pellets and the interstellar medium is proposed. The pellets are slower than the spacecraft and are accelerated backwards as they are overtaken, imparting a forward…
The dynamics of the acceleration of ultrathin foil targets by the radiation pressure of superintense, circularly polarized laser pulses is investigated by analytical modeling and particle-in-cell simulations. By addressing self-induced…