Near term exploitation of solar sailing will rely on the identification of compelling mission concepts which require solar sails with only a relatively modest performance. While large-scale, high performance missions provide motivation for technology development, they are unlikely to reach flight status without incremental steps in technology development and validation. This paper will present a range of near-term missions for low performance solar sails which are enabled by solar sailing, and which can provide a useful validation pathway to more advanced future missions.
Near-term mission applications for low performance solar sails
Space Technology and Applications International Forum - 2001 ; 2001 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 552 , 1 ; 379-384
2001-02-02
6 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Near-Term Mission Applications for Low Performance Solar Sails
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2001
|INNOVATIVE MISSION-PROPULSION CONCEPTS - Near-Term, Low Cost Missions for Solar Sails
Online Contents | 2000
|Distributed Reflectivity Solar Sails for Extended Mission Applications
Springer Verlag | 2014
|Solar Sails for Near-Term Advanced Scientific Deep Space Missions
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2002
|From Solar Sails to Laser Sails
NTRS | 2017
|