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 1861–1864, published his theory of electromagnetic fields and radiation, which shows that light has momentum and thus can exert pressure on objects.
So by 1864, the physics community and beyond knew sunlight carried momentum that would exert a pressure on objects. 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 ...
So by 1864, the physics community and beyond knew sunlight carried momentum that would exert a pressure on objects. 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 ...
He apparently was the first scientist to state that light could move objects between stars. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first proposed using the pressure of sunlight to propel spacecraft through space and suggested, "using tremendous mirrors of very thin sheets to utilize the pressure of sunlight to attain cosmic velocities". Friedrich Zander (Tsander) published a technical paper in 1925 that included technical analysis of solar sailing.
Zander wrote of "applying small forces" using "light pressure or transmission of light energy to distances by means of very thin mirrors". JBS Haldane speculated in 1927 about the invention of tubular spaceships that would take humanity to space and how "wings of metallic foil of a square kilometre or more in area are spread out to catch the Sun's radiation pressure". J.
Bernal wrote in 1929, "A form of space sailing might be developed which used the repulsive effect of the Sun's rays instead of wind.
A typical spacecraft going to Mars, for example, will be displaced thousands of kilometers 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.
Then, to increase its speed, it would tack, close-hauled, down the gravitational field, spreading full sail again as it rushed past the Sun." Carl Sagan, in the 1970s, popularized the idea of sailing on light using a giant structure which would reflect photons in one direction, creating momentum.
The first two are from the detailed design effort at JPL in the 1970s.
Minor errors are greatly amplified by gravity assist maneuvers, so using radiation pressure to make very small corrections saved large amounts of propellant. ===Interstellar flight=== In the 1970s, Robert Forward proposed two beam-powered propulsion schemes using either lasers or masers to push giant sails to a significant fraction of the speed of light. In the science fiction novel Rocheworld, Forward described a light sail propelled by super lasers.
Most designs steer with small moving sails on the ends of the spars. In the 1970s JPL studied many rotating blade and ring sails for a mission to rendezvous with Halley's Comet.
Unfortunately, the mission didn't take place in time and he would never live to finally see it through. 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 Comet. ==Physical principles== ===Solar radiation pressure=== Many people believe that spacecraft using solar sails are pushed by the Solar winds just as sailboats and sailing ships are pushed by the winds across the waters on Earth.
A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigation have been proposed since the 1980s.
The first spacecraft to make use of the technology was IKAROS, launched in 2010. A useful analogy to solar sailing may be a sailing boat; the light exerting a force on the mirrors is akin to a sail being blown by the wind.
The device, which occupies only 0.4 U of the cubesat, shall deploy a sail of 2.1 m2 to deorbit the satellite at the end of the operational life ==Sail configurations== IKAROS, launched in 2010, was the first practical solar sail vehicle.
A de-orbit sail developed at Cranfield University is part of the UK satellite TechDemoSat-1, launched in 2014, and is expected to be deployed at the end of the satellite's five-year useful life.
In July 2015 British 3U CubeSat called DeorbitSail was launched into space with the purpose of testing 16 m2 deorbit structure, but eventually it failed to deploy it.
As of 2015, it was still under thrust, proving the practicality of a solar sail for long-duration missions.
There is also a student 2U CubeSat mission called PW-Sat2 planned to launch in 2017 that will test 4 m2 deorbit sail.
In June 2017 a second British 3U CubeSat called InflateSail deployed a 10 m2 deorbit sail at an altitude of . In June 2017 the 3U Cubesat URSAMAIOR has been launched in low Earth orbit to test the deorbiting system ARTICA developed by Spacemind.
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Page generated on 2021-08-05