TECHNICAL LECTURE REPORT ON

SOLAR SAILS

GUIDES OBSERVATION:

HOF (L)S OBSERVATION:

CONTENTS

SL NO

CHAPTER

PAGE NO

01

Introduction to Solar Sails

02

History

03

Present Scenario

04

Principle of Solar Sails

05

Construction of Solar Sails

11

06

Working of Solar Sails

12

07

Capability

16

08

Applications

18

09

Conclusion

21

10

References

22

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO SOLAR SAILS
1.1 Introduction.
Harnessing the power of the Sun to propel a spacecraft may appear somewhat ambitious

and

the observation that light exerts a force contradicts everyday experiences. However, it is and
accepted phenomenon that the quantum packets of energy which compose Sunlight, that is to
say photons, perturb the orbit attitude of spacecraft through conservation of momentum; this
perturbation is known as solar radiation pressure (SRP). To be exact, the momentum of the
electromagnetic energy from the Sun pushes the spacecraft and from Newtons second law
momentum is transferred when the energy strikes and when it is reflected. The concept of solar
sailing is thus the use of these quantum packets of energy, i.e. SRP, to propel a
spacecraft,potentially providing a continuous acceleration limited only by the lifetime of the sail
materials in the space environment. The momentum carried by individual photons is extremely
small; at best a solar sail will experience 9 N of force per square kilometre of sail located in Earth
orbit (McInnes, 1999), thus to provide a suitably large momentum transfer the sail is required to
have a large surface area while maintaining as low a mass as possible.
Adding the impulse due to incident and reflected photons it is found that the idealised thrust
vector is directed normal to the surface of the sail, hence by controlling the orientation of the sail
relative to the Sun orbital angular momentum can be gained or reduced. Using momentum change
through reflecting such quantum packets of energy the sail slowly but continuously accelerates to
accomplish a wide-range of potential missions.
1.2

Solar sails (also called light sails or photon sails) are a form of spacecraft propulsion using

the radiation pressure (also called solar pressure) from stars to push large ultra-thin mirrors to
high speeds. Light sails could also be driven by energy beams to extend their range of
operations, which is strictly beam sailing rather than solar sailing.

Solar sail craft offer the possibility of low-cost operations combined with long operating lifetimes.
Since they have few moving parts and use no propellant, they can potentially be used numerous
times for delivery of payloads.
Solar sails use a phenomenon that has a proven, measured effect on spacecraft. Solar pressure
affects all spacecraft, whether in interplanetary space or in orbit around a planet or small body. A
typical spacecraft going to Mars, for example, will be displaced by thousands of kilometres by
solar pressure, so the effects must be accounted for in trajectory planning, which has been done
since the time of the earliest interplanetary spacecraft of the 1960s. Solar pressure also affects
the attitude of a craft, a factor that must be included in spacecraft design.
The total force exerted on an 800 by 800 meter solar sail, for example, is about 5 newtons (1.1
lbf) at Earth's distance from the Sun,[2] making it a low-thrust propulsion system, similar to
spacecraft propelled by electric engines.

1.3 Concept.
Solar Radiation Pressure
Solar radiation exerts a pressure on the sail due to reflection and a small fraction that is
absorbed. The absorbed energy heats the sail, which re-radiates that energy from the front and
rear surfaces.
The momentum of a photon or an entire flux is given by p = E/c, where E is the photon or flux
energy, p is the momentum, and c is the speed of light. Solar radiation pressure is calculated on an
irradiance (solar constant) value of 1361 W/m2 at 1 AU (Earth-Sun distance), perfect absorbance:
F = 4.54 N per square metre (4.54 Pa) perfect reflectance: F = 9.08 N per square metre
(9.08 Pa) (normal to surface)
A perfect sail is flat and has 100% specular reflection. An actual sail will have an overall efficiency
of about 90%, about 8.17 N/m2, due to curvature (billow), wrinkles, absorbance, re-radiation from
front and back, non-specular effects, and other factors.

Force on a sail results from reflecting the photon flux

The force on a sail and the actual acceleration of the craft vary by the inverse square of distance
from the Sun (unless close to the Sun), and by the square of the cosine of the angle between the
sail force vector and the radial from the Sun, so
F = F0 cos2 / R2 (ideal sail)
where R is distance from the Sun in AU. An actual square sail can be modelled as:
F = F0 (0.349 + 0.662 cos 2 0.011 cos 4) / R2
Note that the force and acceleration approach zero generally around = 60 rather than 90as one
might expect with an ideal sail.

Solar wind, the flux of charged particles blown out from the Sun, exerts a nominal dynamic
pressure of about 3 to 4 nPa, three orders of magnitude less than solar radiation pressure on a
reflective sail.
Sail Parameters
Sail loading (areal density) is an important parameter, which is the total mass divided by the sail
area, expressed in g/m2. It is represented by the Greek letter .
A sail craft has a characteristic acceleration, ac, which it would experience at 1 AU when facing the
Sun. Using the value from above of 9.08 N per square metre of radiation pressure at 1 AU, ac is
related to areal density by:
ac = 9.08(efficiency) / mm/s2
Assuming 90% efficiency, ac = 8.17 / mm/s2
The lightness number, , is the dimensionless ratio of maximum vehicle acceleration divided by the
Sun's local gravity. Using the values at 1 AU:
= ac / 5.93
The lightness number is also independent of distance from the Sun because both gravity and light
pressure fall off as the inverse square of the distance from the Sun. Therefore, this number defines
the types of orbit maneuvers that are possible for a given vessel.
The table presents some example values. Payloads are not included. The first two are from the
detailed design effort at JPL in the 1970s. The third, the lattice sailer, might represent about the
best possible performance level. The dimensions for square and lattice sails are edges. The
dimension for heliogyro is blade tip to blade tip.

Type

(g/m )
2

ac(mm/s2)

Size
(km)

Square sail

5.27

1.56

0.26

0.820

Heliogyro

6.39

1.29

0.22

15

Lattice sailer

0.07

117

20

CHAPTER 2
HISTORY
2.1

Johannes Kepler observed that comet tails point away from the Sun and suggested that the

Sun caused the effect. In a letter to Galileo in 1610, he wrote, "Provide ships or sails adapted to
the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void." He might have had
the comet tail phenomenon in mind when he wrote those words, although his publications on
comet tails came several years later.
James Clerk Maxwell, in 186164, published his theory of electromagnetic fields and radiation,
which shows that light has momentum and thus can exert pressure on objects. Maxwell's
equations provide the theoretical foundation for sailing with light pressure. So by 1864, the physics
community and beyond knew sunlight carried momentum that would exert a pressure on objects.
2.2

Jules Verne, in From the Earth to the Moon, published in 1865, wrote "there will some day

appear velocities far greater than these [of the planets and the projectile], of which light or
electricity will probably be the mechanical agent, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets,
and the stars." This is possibly the first published recognition that light could move ships through
space. Given the date of his publication and the widespread, permanent distribution of his work, it
appears that he should be regarded as the originator of the concept of space sailing by light
pressure, although he did not develop the concept further[original research. Verne probably got the
idea directly and immediately from Maxwell's 1864 theory (although it cannot be ruled out that
Maxwell or an intermediary recognized the sailing potential and became the source for Verne).

Albert Einstein provided a different formalism by his recognizing the equivalence of mass and
energy. He simply wrote p = E/c as the relationship between the momentum, the energy, and the
speed of light.
The first formal technology and design effort for a solar sail began in 1976 at Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for a proposed mission to rendezvous with Halley's Come

CHAPTER 3
PRESENT SCENARIO

3.1

Following the Comet Halley studies solar sailing entered a hiatus until the early 1990s

when further advances in spacecraft technology led to renewed interest in the concept. The first
ever ground deployment of a solar sail was performed in Kln in December 1999 by the
German space agency, DLR, in association with ESA and INVENT GmbH when they deployed a
square 20-m solar sail, shown in Fig. 1 (Leipold et al, 2000; Sebolt et al, 2000).
This ground deployment and the associated technology developed by DLR and ESA has
struggled to progress to flight, initially an in-orbit deployment was planned for 2006 however this
project floundered, with a similar, but smaller, demonstration now planned for 2013 as part of a
three-step solar sail technology development program (Lura et al, 2010).
In 2005 NASA completed dual solar sail development programs, funding a solar sail design by
ATK and another by LGarde Inc. who used the inflatable boom technology developed under the
IAE program. Both solar sail systems were deployed to 20-m (side length) in the large vacuum
chamber at NASA Glenn Research Center's Space Power Facility at Plum Brook Station in
Sandusky, Ohio, U.S.A, the world's largest vacuum chamber

(Lichodziejewski et al, 2003;

Murphy et al, 2003 & 2004).

Following the deployment demonstrations the LGarde design was down-selected due to its
perceived scalability to much larger sail sizes for the subsequent NASA New Millennium Space
Technology 9 (ST-9) proposal, prior to the ST-9 program being cancelled. However, it should be
noted that the ATK sail was considered a lower risk option. The intention of the NASA funding
9

was to develop solar sail technology to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) six, however a
subsequent assessment found that actually both the LGarde and ATK sail failed to fully achieve
either TRL 5 or 6, with the ATK sail achieving 89% and 86%, respectively and the LGarde sail
reaching 84 % and 78 %, respectively (Young et al, 2007).
In May 2010 the first spacecraft to use solar radiation pressure as its primary form of propulsion
was launched by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, onboard an H-IIA launch vehicle from the
Tanegashima Space Center as an auxiliary payload alongside the Japanese Venus orbiter
Akatsuki, formerly known as the Venus Climate Orbiter (VCO) and Planet-C,and four microspacecraft. The solar sail spacecraft is called IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by
Radiation Of the Sun) and like the Akatsuki spacecraft was launched onto a near-Venus transfer
trajectory. The IKAROS is a square solar sail, deployed using spinning motion and 0.5 kg tip
masses, the polyimide film used for solar sailing also has thin-film solar arrays embedded in the
film for power generation and liquid crystal devises which can, using electrical power, be
switched from diffusely to specularly reflective for attitude control (Moriet al, 2010). IKAROS has
demonstrated a propulsive force of 1.12mN (Mori et al, 2010) and is shown in Fig. 3. The
IKAROS mission is envisaged as a technology demonstrated towards a power sail spacecraft,
using the large deployable structure to host thin-film solar cells to generate large volumes of
power to drive a SEP system (Kawaguchi, 2010).
In addition to the traditional view of solar sailing as a very large structure several organisations,
including NASA and the Planetary Society, are developing CubeSat based solar sails. Indeed,
NASA flew the first CubeSat solar sails on board the third SpaceX Falcon1 launch on 2 August
2008 which failed approximately 2 minutes after launch. It is however unclear how such
CubeSail programs will complement traditional solar sailing and whether they will provide
sufficient confidence in the technology to enable larger, more advanced solar sail demonstrator
missions. It is clear that the technology of solar sailing is beginning to emerge from the drawing
board. Additionally, since the NASA Comet Halley mission studies a large number of solar sail
mission concepts have been devised and promoted by solar sail proponents. As such, this
range of mission applications and concepts enables technology requirements derivation and a
technology application pull roadmap to be developed based on the key features of missions
which are enabled, or significantly enhance, through solar sail propulsion. This book chapter will
thus attempt to link the technology application pull to the current technology developments and
to establish a new vision for the future of solar sailing.
10

CHAPTER 4
PRINCIPLE OF SOLAR SAILS
4.1

The direction and the magnitude of the solar radiation pressure are depending on the

distance between sun and sail as well as the sail attitude. The orbital dynamics of solar sailcraft is
in many respects similar to the orbital dynamics of other spacecraft, where a small continuous
thrust is applied to modify the spacecraft's orbit over an extended period of time. However, other
continuous thrust spacecraft (e.g. using electric propulsion) may orient its thrust vector into any
desired direction and vary its thrust level within a wide range, whereas the thrust vector of a solar
sail is constrained to lie on the surface of a bubble directed away from the sun. Nevertheless, by
controlling the sail orientation relative to the sun, solar sailcraft can gain orbital angular momentum
and spiral outwards away from the sun or lose orbital angular momentum and spiral inwards
towards the sun.

11

12

CHAPTER 5
CONSTRUCTION OF SOLAR SAILS

5.1

Solar Sail Materials

While solar sails have been designed before (NASA's had a solar sail program back in the 1970s),
materials available until the last decade or so were much too heavy to design a practical solar
sailing vehicle. Besides being lightweight, the material must be highly reflective and able to tolerate
extreme temperatures. The giant sails being tested by NASA today are made of very lightweight,
reflective material that is upwards of 100 times thinner than an average sheet of stationery. This
"aluminized, temperature-resistant material" is called CP-1. The reflective nature of the sails is key.
As photons (light particles) bounce off the reflective material, they gently push the sail along by
transferring momentum to the sail. Because there are so many photons from sunlight, and
because they are constantly hitting the sail, there is a constant pressure (force per unit area)
exerted on the sail that produces a constant acceleration of the spacecraft. Although the force on a
solar-sail spacecraft is less than a conventional chemical rocket, such as the space shuttle, the
solar-sail spacecraft constantly accelerates over time and achieves a greater velocity.You might be
wondering what happens when the spacecraft finds itself far from sunlight. An onboard laser could
take over providing the necessary propulsion to the sails.
The material developed for the Drexler solar sail was a thin aluminium film with a baseline
thickness of 0.1 m, to be fabricated by vapor deposition in a space-based system. Drexler used a
similar process to prepare films on the ground. As anticipated, these films demonstrated adequate

13

strength and robustness for handling in the laboratory and for use in space, but not for folding,
launch, and deployment.
The most common material in current designs is aluminized 2 m Kapton film. It resists the heat of
a pass close to the Sun and still remains reasonably strong. The aluminium reflecting film is on the
Sun side. The sails of Cosmos 1 were made of aluminized PET film (Mylar).
There has been some theoretical speculation about using molecular manufacturing techniques to
create advanced, strong, hyper-light sail material, based on nanotube mesh weaves, where the
weave "spaces" are less than half the wavelength of light impinging on the sail. While such
materials have so far only been produced in laboratory conditions, and the means for
manufacturing such material on an industrial scale are not yet available, such materials could
mass less than 0.1 g/m2, making them lighter than any current sail material by a factor of at least
30. For comparison, 5 micrometre thick Mylar sail material mass 7 g/m2, aluminized Kapton films
have a mass as much as 12 g/m2, and Energy Science Laboratories' new carbon fiber material
masses 3 g/m2.
The least dense metal is lithium, about 5 times less dense than aluminium. Fresh, unoxidized
surfaces are reflective. At a thickness of 20 nm, lithium has an areal density of 0.011 g/m2. A highperformance sail could be made of lithium alone at 20 nm (no emission layer). It would have to be
fabricated in space and not used to approach the Sun. In the limit, a sail craft might be constructed
with a total areal density of around 0.02 g/m2, giving it a lightness number of 67 and ac of about
400 mm/s2. Magnesium and beryllium are also potential materials for high-performance sails.
These 3 metals can be alloyed with each other and with aluminium.

5.2

Reflective and Emissive layers : Aluminium is the common choice for the reflection layer. It

typically has a thickness of at least 20 nm, with a reflectivity of 0.88 to 0.90. Chromium is a good
14

choice for the emission layer on the face away from the Sun. It can readily provide emissivity
values of 0.63 to 0.73 for thicknesses from 5 to 20 nm on plastic film. Usable emissivity values are
empirical because thin-film effects dominate; bulk emissivity values do not hold up in these cases
because material thickness is much thinner than the emitted wavelengths.
5.3

Fabrication

Sails are fabricated on Earth on long tables where ribbons are unrolled and joined to create the
sails. These sails are packed, launched, and unfurled in space.
In the future, fabrication could take place in orbit inside large frames that support the sail. This
would result in lower mass sails and elimination of the risk of deployment failure.

CHAPTER 6
WORKING OF SOLAR SAIL
6.1 Changing orbits
Sailing operations are simplest in interplanetary orbits, where attitude changes are done at low
rates. For outward bound trajectories, the sail force vector is oriented forward of the Sun line,
which increases orbital energy and angular momentum, resulting in the craft moving farther from
the Sun. For inward trajectories, the sail force vector is oriented behind the Sun line, which
decreases orbital energy and angular momentum, resulting in the craft moving in toward the Sun.
It is worth noting that only the Sun's gravity pulls the craft toward the Sunthere is no analog to a
sailboat's tacking to windward. To change orbital inclination, the force vector is turned out of the
plane of the velocity vector.

15

In orbits around planets or other bodies, the sail is oriented so that its force vector has a
component along the velocity vector, either in the direction of motion for an outward spiral, or
against the direction of motion for an inward spiral.
Trajectory optimizations can often require intervals of reduced or zero thrust. This can be achieved
by rolling the craft around the Sun line with the sail set at an appropriate angle to reduce or
remove the thrust.

6.2

Swing-by Maneuvers

A close solar passage can be used to increase a craft's energy. The increased radiation pressure
combines with the efficacy of being deep in the Sun's gravity well to substantially increase the
energy for runs to the outer Solar System. The optimal approach to the Sun is done by increasing
the orbital eccentricity while keeping the energy level as high as practical. The minimum approach
distance is a function of sail angle, thermal properties of the sail and other structure, load effects
on structure, and sail optical characteristics (reflectivity and emissivity). A close passage can result
in substantial optical degradation. Required turn rates can increase substantially for a close
passage. A sail craft arriving at a star can use a close passage to reduce energy, which also
applies to a sail craft on a return trip from the outer Solar System.
A lunar swing-by can have important benefits for trajectories leaving from or arriving at Earth. This
can reduce trip times, especially in cases where the sail is heavily loaded. A swing-by can also be
used to obtain favorable departure or arrival directions relative to Earth.
A planetary swing-by could also be employed similar to what is done with coasting spacecraft, but
good alignments might not exist due to the requirements for overall optimization of the trajectory.
6.3 Smart lines
A smart line could be a critical element of sailing operations. As with maritime ships, lines are
essential for a wide range of uses. One difference is that some lines may be very long and need to
be self-guiding. The lines could extend from and retract into the sail craft.
A maneuverable grappling device can be used at the end of a line to place or pick up payload
containers, to secure a ship to a structure such as a station, to pick up samples from an asteroid or
comet, or to engage in towing. The maneuvering unit is like a small spacecraft, with many of the

16

same sensors and control systems. It could draw power from and communicate with the sail craft
through the line. These operations could be done autonomously.
Lines a few hundred kilometers long may be used to move a ship from a space station to an orbit
farther out where it could begin sailing.
6.4 Towing
Smart lines can enable towing operations by being able to attach to or release objects at the
remote end of the line. Attached objects might be pulled in to the body of the sailer or remain at the
end of the deployed line. Objects to be towed may have attachment points that allow multiple sail
craft to engage in the towing. Towing operations can include deflecting large bodies that pose a
hazard to Earth, bringing natural bodies to Earth or other sites for resource recovery, and
transporting disabled spacecraft or other structures.
To tow or deflect a large body, poles can be inserted on the spin axis of the body. Sail craft can
attach to the embedded poles using smart lines. Slip rings enable the craft to tow without the lines
getting wrapped up as a result of rotation of the body.

CHAPTER 7
CAPABILITY
7.1 Key characteristics
Solar sailing has traditionally been perceived as an enabling technology for high-energy emissions;
however, as has been shown in the preceding sections the key characteristics of a mission which
is enabled, or significantly enhanced by solar sailing are more complex than simply this. Solar
sailing is, due to the lack of propellant mass, often noted as reducing the launch mass of an
equivalent chemical or SEP concept, which is in-turn noted as reducing launch and emission cost.
However, while it is accurate that the launch mass is typically reduced this does not directly result
17

in a reduced launch vehicle cost as the reduction may not be sufficient to allow the use of a less
capable, and hence lower cost, launch vehicle. As such the launch cost is only reduced if the
reduced launch mass allows a smaller launch vehicle to be used, meaning that launch cost varies
as a step function while launch mass linearly increases. Finally, it should be noted that if the total
mission cost is high, say, 500+ M then reducing the launch mass cost by 10 20 M is a cost
saving of order 2 4 %, which may not be considered a good cost/risk ratio for the project and
indeed, the cost saving may be insufficient to pay for the additional development of the technology.
Thus for the reduction in launch mass to be an enabling, or significantly enhancing aspect of a
solar sail mission concept the cost saving must also be a significant percentage of the total
mission cost. All solar sail mission concepts can be sub-divided into two classes, these are:
Class One
Where the solar sail is used to reach a high-energy target and after which the sail can be
jettisoned by the spacecraft, for example the Solar Polar Orbiter mission.
Class Two
Where the solar sail is required to maintain a novel or otherwise unsustainable observation
outpost, for example, highly non-keplerian or non-inertial orbit applications, such as Geostorm and
GeoSail.
This distinction is important as the later compares very favourably against most other propulsion
systems, especially as the mission duration and hence reaction mass is increased.
However, a solar sail is a very large structure and could adversely impact the mission objectives
either through a characteristically low pointing accuracy due to low frequency structural flexing, or
due to the solar sail interfering with the local environment in, for example, particle and field
measurements. Thus, a critical requirement on early solar sail demonstration missions must be to
validate the simulated pointing accuracy of the platform and the effect of the sail on the local space
environment.
From the mission catalogue it is seen that solar sail propulsion has been considered for a large
range of mission applications, some of which it is more suitable for than others. Each of the solar
sail applications within the mission catalogue are sub-divided by the level of enhancement offered
by solar sail propulsion.

18

CHAPTER 8
APPLICATIONS
8.1

Planet-centred and other short orbit period applications.

This category is essentially planet, minor-planet and small body centred trajectories.

Planet centered trajectory design has been largely restricted to escape manoeuvres or relatively
simplistic orbit manoeuvring, such as lunar fly-bys or orbit inclination change. Such trajectories
place significant technology demands on the solar sail architecture, for example a locally optimal
energy gain control profile for an Earth-centered orbit requires the sail to be rotated through 180
degrees once per orbit and then rapidly reset to maximise energy gain; as the sail size grows
clearly this becomes an increasingly demanding technology requirement.

19

8.2

Highly non-keplerian orbit applications.

This category is, in some regards, an extension of the concept embodied by non-inertial

orbits, with the sail providing a small but continuous acceleration to enable an otherwise
unattainable or unsustainable observation outpost to be maintained. Two primary solar sail
applications of Highly NKOs are found in the literature; Geostorm and Polesitter (also called Polar
Observer) (Biggs & McInnes, 2009; Chen-wan, 2004; Driver, 1980; Forward, 1991; Matloff, 2004;
McInnes et al, 1994; Sauer, Jr., 2004; Waters & McInnes, 2007; West, 1996, 2000, 2004). The
Geostorm mission concept provides real-time monitoring of solar activity; the spacecraft would
operate sunward of the Earths L1 point, thus increasing the warning time for geomagnetic storms.
By imparting a radial outward force from the Sun the solar radiation pressure in-effect reduces
solar gravity and allows the L1 point to be moved sunward. As sail performance is increased solar
gravity is further reduced, thus providing enhanced solar storm warning.
The Polesitter concept extends the Geostorm concept from a singular equilibrium point to
derive equilibrium surfaces which extend out of the ecliptic plane and are again parameterised by
the sail performance (McInnes et al, 1994). By extending the artificial equilibrium points out of the
ecliptic plane, the small but continuous acceleration allows a spacecraft to be stationed above, or
below, the second body within the 3-body problem. A further example of a highly non-keplerian
orbit application is the Statite proposed by Forward (1991), which would use a high-performance
solar sail to directly balance the solar gravity to hover stationary over the poles of the Sun.
8.3

Inner solar system rendezvous missions

This category covers missions which use the solar sail to rendezvous, and perhaps bound

the orbit to, a body in the inner solar system; defined as all bodies from the asteroid belt inwards,
specifically excluding bodies which are, in-effect, part of the Jupiter system, for example the Hilda
and Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Solar sailing, like other forms of low-thrust propulsion ,requires that if
a bound orbit about the target body is desired then at arrival the spacecraft must have, in-effect,
zero hyperbolic excess velocity. Therefore, any wholly low-thrust interplanetary mission is required,
unlike high-thrust missions, to slow-down prior to arrival at the target body and subsequently the
transfer duration is typically significantly increased; this is especially true for bodies which can be
relatively easily reached by high-thrust, chemical propulsion systems such as Mars and Venus.
Furthermore, once the solar sail has been captured into a bound-orbit about the target body it then
has the typical disadvantages discussed previously for planet-centred solar sail application
20

8.4

Outer solar system rendezvous missions

The use of solar sails for outer solar system rendezvous missions has been long discussed within
the literature (Garner et al, 2001; Leipold, 1999; Wright, 1992; Wright & Warmke,1976).
Furthermore, an assessment study was previously conducted by the Authors and Hughes looking
at a range of solar sail Jupiter missions (McInnes et al, 2003e, 2004a), including concepts for
exploration of the Galilean moons. As with low-thrust inner solar system rendezvous missions the
hyperbolic excess velocity at the target outer solar system body must be lower than high-thrust
missions. The inverse squared variation in SRP with solar distance however means that the sail
performance is significantly reduced over the same sail at Earth. As such the requirement to
reduce the hyperbolic excess velocity prior to arrival at the outer solar system body leads to
prolonged transfer durations
8.5

Outer solar system flyby missions

Outer solar system fly-by missions remove the requirement to reduce the hyperbolic excess
velocity prior to arrival at the target body and as such negate much of the negative elements of
solar sail outer solar system rendezvous missions. A Jupiter atmospheric probe mission was
considered by the Authors and Hughes (McInnes et al, 2003e) as a potential Jupiter flyby mission.
It was concluded that due to the mass of the atmospheric probes, of which three were required,
and the relative ease of such a mission with chemical propulsion that solar sail propulsion offered
little to such a mission. It is of note that as the target flyby body moves further from the Sun,
8.6

Solar missions

The Ulysses spacecraft used a Jupiter gravity assist to pass over the solar poles, obtaining field
and particle measurements but no images of the poles. Furthermore, the Ulysses orbit is highly
elliptical, with a pole revisit time of approximately 6 years. It is desired that future solar analysis be
performed much closer to the sun, as well as from an out-of-ecliptic perspective. The Cosmic
Visions mission concept Solar Orbiter intends to deliver a science suite of order 180 kg to a
maximum inclination of order 35 deg with respect to the solar equator and to a minimum solar
approach radius of 0.22 au using SEP. The inability of the Solar Orbiter mission to attain a solar
polar orbit highlights the difficulty of such a goal with conventional propulsion.

21

8.7

Beyond Neptune

It has been shown that solar sail propulsion offers significant benefits to missions concepts which
aim to deliver a spacecraft beyond Neptune, for either a Kuiper Belt or Interstellar Heliopause (at
approximately 200 au) mission. Such outer solar system missions initially exploit the inverse
squared variation in SRP with solar distance by approaching the Sun to gain a rapid energy boast
which generates a hyperbolic trajectory and allows the spacecraft to rapidly escape the solar
system. Solar sails mission concepts significantly beyond the Interstellar Heliopause were
considered by Macdonald et al (2010). In-order to determine the limit of the solar sail concept an
Oort cloud mission was examined using solely SRP to propel the spacecraft. It was found that
although no fundamental reason existed why such a mission may not be possible the practicalities
were such that the Interstellar Heliopause Probe (IHP) mission concept could be considered
representative of the upper limiting bound of the solar sail concept.

22

CHAPTER 9
CONCLUSION
9.1
A solar sail mission catalogue has been developed and presented. The mission catalogue
was sub-divided into applications which were enabled, or significantly enhanced by solar
sailing, of which solar sailing is of marginal benefit and of which solar sailing could
beconsidered unconstructive. From this the key characteristics of solar sail enabled,
orsignificantly enhanced, missions were detailed prior to a detailed discussion of three key
applications of solar sailing and the presentation of a solar sail application pull technology
development roadmap. Considering the solar sail application pull technology development
roadmap it was noted

that the near-term was sparsely populated, with the significant

majority of applications clustered in the mid to far term. The concept of a system level
Advancement Degree of Difficulty was introduced and it was illustrated that how through, for
example, hybridisation with solar electric propulsion the project risk of solar sailing could be
reduced while simultaneously.

23

CHAPTER 10
REFERENCES
1.

Georgevic, R. M. (1973) "The Solar Radiation Pressure Forces and Torques Model", The
Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, Vol. 27, No. 1, JanFeb. First known publication
describing how solar radiation pressure creates forces and torques that affect
spacecraft.

2.

Jerome Wright (1992), Space Sailing, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers

3.

Jump up^ Friedrich Zander's 1925 paper, "Problems of flight by jet propulsion:
interplanetary flights", was translated by NASA. See NASA Technical Translation F-147
(1964)

4.

"Design of a High Performance Solar Sail System, MS Thesis," (PDF). Dept. of

Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Techniology, Boston.

5.

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