Related papers: Solar sail with inflatable toroidal shell
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…
The POLAR Investigation of the Sun (POLARIS) mission uses a combination of a gravity assist and solar sail propulsion to place a spacecraft in a 0.48 AU circular orbit around the Sun with an inclination of 75 degrees with respect to solar…
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…
The coupled attitude and orbit dynamics of solar sails is studied. The shape of the sail is a simplified quasi-rhombic-pyramid that provides the structure helio-stablility properties. After adimensionalisation, the system is put in the form…
We analyse the potential of the electric solar wind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian…
The interaction of magnetic fields and stratified convection was studied in the context of the solar and late type stellar dynamos by using numerical 3D MHD simulations. The topology of stratified asymmetric and over-turning convection…
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…
We consider a special relativistic effect, known as the Poynting-Robertson effect, on various types of trajectories of solar sails. Since this effect occurs at order $v^{\phi}/c$, where $v^{\phi}$ is the tangential speed relative to the…
The leading theoretical paradigm for the Sun's magnetic cycle is an $\alpha\omega$-dynamo process, in which a combination of differential rotation and turbulent, helical flows produces a large-scale magnetic field that reverses every 11…
We discuss a possibility to survey many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) with a single launch using a few smallscale spacecraft, each equipped with solar sails, which could be unfurled from a single interplanetary bus at the perihelion of that…
We present an improved analytic calculation for the tidal radius of satellites and test our results against N-body simulations. The tidal radius in general depends upon four factors: the potential of the host galaxy, the potential of the…
One of the key questions in solar physics that remains to be answered concerns the strength and the distribution of the magnetic fields at the base of the convection zone. The flux tube dynamics requires that toroidal fields of strength as…
We report on the results of four convective dynamo simulations with an outer coronal layer. The magnetic field is self-consistently generated by the convective motions beneath the surface. Above the convection zone, we include a polytropic…
The motivation for considering distributed large scale dynamos in the solar context is reviewed in connection with the magnetic helicity constraint. Preliminary accounts of 3-dimensional direct numerical simulations (in spherical shell…
A charged tether or wire experiences Coulomb drag when inserted into flowing plasma. In the solar wind the Coulomb drag can be utilised as efficient propellantless interplanetary propulsion as the electric solar wind sail (electric sail,…
We present a high-resolution, highly stratified numerical simulation of rotating thermal convection in a spherical shell. Our aim is to study in detail the processes that can maintain a near surface shear layer (NSSL) as inferred from…
The role of solar wind expansion in generating whistler waves is investigated using the EB-iPic3D code, which models solar wind expansion self-consistently within a fully kinetic semi-implicit approach. The simulation is initialized with an…
Under the assumption of thermal wind balance and effective entropy mixing in constant rotation surfaces, the isorotational contours of the solar convective zone may be reproduced with great fidelity. Even at this early stage of development,…
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…
I represent results three-dimensional numerical simulation of solar surface convection on scales local supergranulation with realistic model physics. I study thermal structure of convective motions in photosphere, the range of convection…