The Rayleigh-Rice Vector Scattering Theory is applied to the interaction between sunlight and sail’s reflective layer, thus going beyond the scalar scattering theory already applied to solar-photon sailing. Diffuse-reflectance sailcraft acceleration is not negligible in accurate sailcraft trajectory propagation. The related values amount to about 20–110 times those ones due to the total solar irradiance fluctuations. The resultant of the diffuse-reflectance photon momenta per unit time and unit area, as function of the sail surface properties and sunlight incidence angle, exhibits many meaningful properties not previously reported in the solar-photon sailing literature.


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    Title :

    Applying Vector Scattering Theory to Solar-Photon Sail Thrust Modeling


    Additional title:

    Springer Praxis Books (formerly: Springer-Praxis Series)


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2014-02-04


    Size :

    20 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English