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Solar Sail
Solar Sail
Geethika
Muralidharan
B10 ISP
CUSAT
Contents
Introduction
History
Working
Components
Sail
designs
Missions
Applications
Merits and demerits
conclusion
Introduction
Solar
Introduction
400
years back
Johannes Kepler
proposed the idea
In the 1960s,
James Clerk
Maxwell predicted
that
electromagnetic
radiation exerts a
pressure because
of the momentum
property of
radiation
away
Reflected light generates reaction force
much like reaction force of
rocket
principle:
Drag when wind
moving over the
sails (small
neglect)
Wind flows over
airfoil sail receives
force perpendicular
to wind direction
Boat moves forward
is made up
of packets of
energy known as
photons
Incident rays of
sunlight reflect off
the solar sail at an
angle
Change in
momentum
pushes the sail
Working
Two
components of force
In the direction of incident
sunlight
In the direction normal to the
incident rays
Component tangent to the sail
surface cancel out
Components normal to the
surface add up to produce the
thrust normal to the sail surface
sail is effective
No noticeable friction
Space is very empty and clean so
there is plenty of room
Continuous supply of energy
Comparative study
In
Components
Continuous
Sail parameters
Sail
loading ()
(mass/area)
Acceleration
8.25/
in mm/s2
Lightness
=ac/5.93
number
Sail designs
Square
sail
Large,
Optimum
Design
Packing/deployment issues
No spin to maintain tension
Helio gyro
Plastic-film blades
deployed from rollers
Film held out by
centrifugal forces
No mass advantage
over a square sail
Attractive because the
method of deploying
the sail is simpler than
a square sail
Sail deployment
Essential qualities
Lightweight
Highly
reflexive
Tolerate extreme temperatures
Materials
Aluminium
Titanium
Nickel
Silicon
boron
monoxide
Missions Cosmos1
Eight triangular sails
Mylar thin polyester 30 m
wide
Insert 825 kilometer near
polar orbit
Mylar suffer
high sail
Worlds
first solar
temperature+radiation
Launch
planned June 21st 2005
Solar sail lost due to booster
failure
Missions: Nanosail -D
Nano
satellite or Cubesat
Designed to test he potential for
solar sails in atmospheric braking
Used an ultra- thin and light
polymer named CP1
Deployed in low earth orbit,
about 650km
Launched by falcon -1 launch
vehicle in august 2008
JAXA/ISAS
Japan
sails
Solar sail gathers sunlight as
propulsion by means of a
large membrane
Solar power sail- obtains
electricity from thin solar cells
on the
membrane+acceleration by
sun
Ion propulsion engines
accelerate ions driven by
solar cells:-hybrid engine
August 10 2004
Deployed on S-310 rocket,
first successful one
storm(2016-
2020)
150x150m
Solar
polar
imager(2020-2035)
150x150m
Interstellar
probe(2031)
250x250m
Applications
Solar
weather stations
Monitoring the geomagnetic
storms
Launching small satellites
Remote sensing
Probes to the end of milky way
Search for extra terrestrial life
Solar sail
technology is
crucial for the
next generation
of space travel
References
www.howstuffworks.com
www.nasa.org
www.planetarysociety.org
www.wikipedia.org