NASA solar sail technology passes crucial deployment test

In his youth, NASA technologist Les Johnson was riveted by the 1974 novel “The Mote in God’s Eye,” by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, during which an alien spacecraft propelled by solar sails visits humanity. Right now, Johnson and a NASA group are making ready to check an analogous know-how.

NASA continues to unfurl plans for solar sail know-how as a promising methodology of deep space transportation. The company cleared a key know-how milestone in January with the profitable deployment of considered one of 4 equivalent solar sail quadrants. The deployment was showcased Jan. 30 at Redwire Corp.’s new facility in Longmont, Colorado.

NASA’s Marshall House Flight Heart in Huntsville, Alabama, leads the solar sail group, comprised of prime contractor Redwire, which developed the deployment mechanisms and the practically 100-foot-long booms, and subcontractor NeXolve, of Huntsville, which supplied the sail membrane. Along with main the challenge, Marshall developed the algorithms wanted to regulate and navigate with the sail when it flies in space.

The sail is a propulsion system powered by daylight reflecting from the sail, very similar to a sailboat displays the wind. Whereas simply one-quarter of the sail was unfurled within the deployment at Redwire, the entire sail will measure 17,780 sq. ft when totally deployed, with a thickness lower than a human hair at 2 and a half microns. The sail is manufactured from a polymer materials coated with aluminum.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate just lately funded the solar sail know-how to succeed in a brand new know-how readiness degree, or TRL 6, which suggests it is prepared for proposals to be flown on science missions.

“This was a serious final step on the bottom earlier than it is able to be proposed for space missions,” Johnson, who has been concerned with sail know-how at Marshall for about 25 years, stated. “What’s subsequent is for scientists to suggest the usage of solar sails of their missions. We have met our purpose and demonstrated that we’re able to be flown.”

A solar sail touring by deep space offers many potential benefits to missions utilizing the know-how as a result of it does not require any gas, permitting very excessive propulsive efficiency with little or no mass. This in-space propulsion system is well-suited for low-mass missions in novel orbits.

“When you get away from Earth’s gravity and into space, what’s necessary is effectivity and sufficient thrust to journey from one place to a different,” Johnson stated.

A number of the missions of curiosity utilizing solar sail know-how embrace learning space climate and its results on the Earth, or for superior research of the north and south poles of the sun. The latter has been restricted as a result of the propulsion required to get a spacecraft right into a polar orbit across the sun could be very excessive and easily not possible utilizing many of the propulsion techniques out there right this moment.

Photo voltaic sail propulsion can be attainable for enhancing future missions to Venus or Mercury, given their closeness to the sun and the improved thrust a solar sail would obtain within the extra intense daylight there.

Furthermore, it is the final word inexperienced propulsion system, Johnson stated—so long as the sun is shining, the sail may have propulsion. The place the daylight is much less, he envisions a future the place lasers may very well be used to speed up the solar sails to excessive speeds, pushing them outdoors the solar system and past, maybe even to a different star.

“Sooner or later, we’d place large lasers in space that shine their beams on the sails as they depart the solar system, accelerating them to greater and better speeds, till finally they’re going quick sufficient to succeed in one other star in an affordable period of time.”