To evaluate the thrust produced by photon pressure emitted from a 100 W class continuous-wave semiconductor laser, a torsion-balance precise thrust stand is designed and tested. Photon emission propulsion using semiconductor light sources attract interests as a possible candidate for deep-space propellant-less propulsion and attitude control system. However, the thrust produced by photon emission as large as several ten nanonewtons requires precise thrust stand. A resonant method is adopted to enhance the sensitivity of the biflier torsional-spring thrust stand. The torsional spring constant and the resonant of the stand is 1.245 × 10-3 Nm/rad and 0.118 Hz, respectively. The experimental results showed good agreement with the theoretical estimation. The thrust efficiency for photon propulsion was also defined. A maximum thrust of 499 nN was produced by the laser with 208 W input power (75 W of optical output) corresponding to a thrust efficiency of 36.7%. The minimum detectable thrust of the stand was estimated to be 2.62 nN under oscillation at a frequency close to resonance.


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    Title :

    Nanonewton thrust measurement of photon pressure propulsion using semiconductor laser


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments V ; 2011 ; San Diego,California,United States


    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2011-09-01





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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