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Department Of Electrical Engineering

Sapthagiri College Of Engineering
Introduction
A solar sail is a spacecraft without an
engine - it is pushed along directly by
light particles from the Sun, reflecting off
giant mirror-like sails. Because it carries
no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost
unlimited distances, it is the only technology
now in existence.
What is a solar sail?
A solar sail, simply put, is a spacecraft
propelled by sunlight. Whereas a
conventional rocket is propelled by the
thrust produced by its internal engine burn,
a solar sail is pushed forward simply by light
from the Sun. This is possible because light
is made up of packets of energy known as
“photons”, that act like atomic particles, but
with more energy.
 COMPONENTS OF A SOLAR
SAIL

 Solar sails are composed of large flat smooth

sheets of very thin film, supported by ultra-
lightweight structures. The side of the film which
faces the sun is coated with a highly reflective
material so that the resulting product is a huge
mirror, typically about the size of a football field.
The force generated by the sun shining on this
surface is a very gentle force.
SOLAR SAILING

Solar sailing is a method of

converting light energy from the sun
into a source of propulsion for
spacecraft. In essence, a solar sail is a
giant mirror that reflects sunlight in
order to transfer the momentum from
light particles (photons) to the object
that is propelling. The phrase "solar
sails" is often confused with "solar
cells", which is a technology for
converting solar light into electrical
energy.
THE CONCEPT OF SOLAR SAILS
Nearly 400 years ago, as much of Europe was
still involved in naval exploration of the world,
Johannes Kepler proposed the idea of
exploring the galaxy using sails. Through his
observation that comet tails were blown
around by some kind of solar breeze, he
believed sails could capture that wind to
propel spacecraft the way winds moved ships
on the oceans. While Kepler's idea of a solar
wind has been disproven, scientists have since
discovered that sunlight does exert enough
force to move objects. To take advantage of
this force, NASA has been experimenting with
giant solar sails that could be pushed through
the cosmos by light.
WORKING PRINCIPLE OF SOLAR
SAILS
How Does Light Push a Solar Sail?
1-Electromagnetism

James Clerk Maxwell developed the laws describing

electromagnetism and concluded that light is an
electromagnetic wave. Maxwell predicted that when light hits an
object and is absorbed or reflected, the light wave pushes on
electric charges in the surface of the object, which in turn push
on the rest of the object. If the light is reflected, the object gets
pushed twice as hard, just like a ball bouncing of the wall. In
this process the photons transmit their momentum to the
surface twice-once by the initial impact, and again by reflecting
back from it.
2- A Very Very Gentle Force

Sunlight exerts a very gentle force. A square mirror 1

kilometer on a side would only feel about 9 Newtons
or 2 pounds of force. Fortunately, space is very
empty and clean compared to Earth, so there is
plenty of room for a 1 kilometer wide sails to
maneuver, and there is no noticeable friction to
interfere with your 9 Newtons of thrust.
 SOLAR SAIL MATERIALS
While solar sails have been designed before, materials available until the last decade or so were much too heavy to
design a practical solar sailing vehicle. Besides being lightweight, the material must be highly reflective and able to tolerate
extreme temperatures. The giant sails being tested by NASA today are made of very lightweight, reflective material that is
upwards of 100 times thinner than an average sheet of stationery.
Another organization that is developing
solar sail technology, the Planetary Society
(a private, non-profit group based in
Pasadena, California), supports
the Cosmos 1, which boasts solar sails that
are made of aluminum-reinforced Mylar
and are approximately one fourth the
thickness of a one-ply plastic trash bag.
ALUMINUM AS SOLAR SAIL MATERIAL

 The thin metal film, according to the preferred

embodiment of this invention, is an aluminum film.
Aluminum films have high reflectivity, low density, a
reasonable melting point, and a very low vapor
pressure. The reflectivity and transmissivity of aluminum
film is a function of its thickness.
 High deposition rates, near-normal vapor incidence, and
a good vacuum favor high reflectivity.
 Consequently, any aluminum film thick
enough to reflect well in the visible wave
lengths should reflect even better in the
infrared, where roughly half the sun's power
output lies.
 The reflectivity of aluminum films varies with
the deposition conditions.
Aluminium being manufactured for the Solar Sail.
USAGE OF REFRACTORY MATERIALS

 Aluminum films of the minimum thickness required for

reflectivity may prove too weak to support the
stresses imposed upon them during fabrication and
operation, or may creep under load at elevated
temperatures. If so, it is possible to strengthen them,
not by adding further aluminum, but by adding a
reinforcing film of a stronger, more refractory
material. A good reinforcing film should be strong,
light, and easy to deposit.

 The use of a metal as a reinforcing film could reduce

the amount of aluminum needed to give good
reflectance. Some metals, such as nickel, may reflect
well enough to be of interest by themselves.
AREA OF CONCERN IN CONSTRUCTION

 Tears are a critical concern in the use of thin films for

solar sails. While even sheets of extremely thin
material have adequate strength to support the load
expected during fabrication and operation in the
absence of stress concentrations, the inevitability of
manufacturing flaws and micrometeoroid damage
makes this a small comfort.
 The most obvious method of limiting tears is to mount
the film on a supporting mesh.
 the mesh adds mass to the sail and, because it must
be fabricated, transported into space and attached to
the film, adds cost as well.
REMEDY

A more natural approach to tear-stopping is to

subdivide the film, convert it from a continuous
sheet to a redundant network of small, load-
bearing elements. In such a structure, a large
manufacturing flow or a grazing
micrometeoroid impact is free to initiate a tear--
but the tear will cause the failure, not of an
entire sheet, but of a small piece of film,
perhaps 25 square millimeters in area.
Patterns of cuts and wrinkles can de-tension
areas of film to isolate stress to smaller
regions. Each wrinkled region is fabricated with
enough extra material to avoid being stretched
flat as the film is tensioned.
 EXAMPLE OF SOLAR SAILS

5.1 Cosmos 1

Cosmos 1 is a small solar sail intented only for a

short mission.
Nevertheless, once it spreads its sails even this small
spacecraft will be 10 stories tall, as high as the rocket that will
launch it. Its eight triangular blades are 15 meters (49 feet) in
length, and have a total surface area of 600 square meters
(6500 square feet). This is about one and a half times the
size of a basketball court.

. The spacecraft was built in Russia by the Babakin Space

Center under a contract to the Society. It was launched and
operated from Russia.

The purpose of the mission was to conduct the first solar sail flight. Solar sailing is
recognized as a future planetary flight technology on the pathway to interstellar flight (using
laser instead of solar photons).
ADVANTAGES

A solar sail is a spacecraft without a rocket engine. It is

pushed along directly by light particles from the Sun,
reflecting off its giant sails. Because it carries no fuel and
keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, it is
the only technology now in existence that can one day
take us to the stars.
The major advantage of a solar-sail spacecraft is its
ability to travel between the planets and to the stars
without carrying fuel.
Solar-sail spacecraft need only a conventional launch
vehicle to get into Earth orbit, where the solar sails can be
deployed and the spacecraft sent on its way.
These spacecraft accelerate gradually, unlike
conventional chemical rockets, which offer extremely
quick acceleration.
Solar sails will set new speed records for spacecraft and will
enable us to travel beyond our solar system.
LIMITATIONS OF SOLAR SAILS

Solar sails don't work well, if at all, in low

Earth orbit below about 800 km altitude due to
erosion or air drag. Above that altitude they
give very small accelerations that take months
to build up to useful speeds. Solar sails have
to be physically large, and payload size is
often small. Deploying solar sails is also highly
challenging to date.
 MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Critics of the solar sail argue that solar sails are

impractical for orbital and interplanetary missions
because they move on an indirect course.

Another false claim is that solar sails capture energy

primarily from the “solar wind": high speed charged
particles emitted from the sun. These particles would
impart a small amount of momentum upon striking the
sail, but this effect would be small compared to the force
due to radiation pressure from light reflected from the
sail. The force due to light pressure is about 100 times as
strong as that due to solar wind.
FUTURE SPACE TRAVEL
 
Solar sail technology will eventually play a key role in long-
distance NASA missions. NASA believes that the exploration
of space is similar to the tale of the "Tortoise and the Hare,"
with rocket-propelled spacecraft being the hare. In this race,
the rocket-propelled spacecraft will quickly jump out, moving
quickly toward its destination. On the other hand, a rocket
less spacecraft powered by a solar sail would begin its
journey at a slow but steady pace, gradually picking up speed
as the sun continues to exert force upon it. Sooner or later, no
matter how fast it goes, the rocket ship will run out of power.
In contrast, the solar sail craft has an endless supply of power
from the sun. Additionally, the solar sail could potentially
return to earth, whereas the rocket powered vehicle would not
have any propellant to bring it back.
 REFERENCES

www.howstuffworks.com
www.wikepedia.org
www.answers.com
THANK YOU
Wind sailing
 COSMOS-1 MISSION
The mission of Cosmos-1 occurred in two phases. Phase 1 will test
the deployment of two solar-sail blades, and Phase 2 will launch the
Cosmos-1 spacecraft into Earth orbit

Launch Vehicle

To get Cosmos-1 into Earth orbit, the spacecraft was loaded into
a modified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of Russian
design, called the Volna. The ICBM was launched from a Russian
submarine in the Barents Sea. Typically, the Volna ICBM does not The Planetary Society
have enough thrust to reach orbit, but the missile used for Cosmos- Cosmos-1 will be launched
1 will have an added rocket engine (kick stage) that is used to de- from a submarine.
orbit satellites. The kick-stage engine will provide the additional
thrust required to get Cosmos-1 into orbit.
 Phase 1
Phase 1 of the Cosmos-1 Solar Sail Project was launched on
June 21,2005. The goal of Phase 1 was to test the deployment of
the solar sails. To do this, a payload consisting of two inflatable
solar-sail blades and a solar-sail platform with an imaging camera
was packaged inside a Volna ICBM and launched from a Russian
submarine in the Barents Sea. The flight was a suborbital flight that
lasted about 15 minutes. At about 248 mi (400 km) high, the two
solar-sail blades were deployed. The camera in the platform
imaged the sail deployment. This test spacecraft used an
aerobrake to slow down in the upper atmosphere and an additional
inflatable braking device as it approached the ground.
 Phase 2
Phase 2 was an orbital flight of the actual Cosmos-1
spacecraft. Again, it was launched from a Russian submarine on a
modified Volna ICBM, but the Volna rocket failed, and the
spacecraft failed to reach orbit. A solar sail would have been used
to gradually raise the spacecraft to a higher earth orbit. The mission
would have lasted for one month. A suborbital prototype test by the
group failed in 2001 as well, also because of rocket failure.
 Laser assisted light sailing
Light sailing works well for inner planet missions and for
activities extending out to the Mars orbit. However, the solar flux falls
off as the inverse square of the distance from the sun. Thus for
missions beyond the Jupiter orbit, an alternative to solar propulsion
is to use directed light from a high power laser. As a pioneer inventor
in the field of interstellar propulsion, Robert Forward has an avid
interest in developing methods for boosting the intensity of light that
can be delivered to a light sail. His goal is to reduce the cruise
duration of a trip from our solar system to the nearest star from 6500
years to a time frame on the order of 40 years.
5.3 Recent Developments
No solar sails have been successfully deployed as primary propulsion
systems, but research in the area is continuing

1. On August 9,2004 Japanese ISAS successfully deployed two prototype

solar sails from a sounding rocket. A clover type sail was deployed at 122
km altitude and a fan type sail was deployed at 169 km altitude. Both sails
used 7.5 micrometer thick film.

2. A joint private project between Planetary society, Cosmos Studios and

Russian Academy of Science launched Cosmos 1 on June 21,2005, from a
submarine in the Barents Sea, but theVolna rocket failed, and the spacecraft
failed to reach orbit. A solar sail would have been used to gradually raise the
spacecraft to a higher earth orbit. The mission would have lasted for one
month. A suborbital prototype test by the group failed in 2001 as well, also
because of rocket failure

3. A 15-meter-diameter solar sail (SSP, solar sail sub payload, soraseiru

sabupeiro-do) was launched together with ASTRO-F on a M-V rocket at
21:28, February, 2006 UTC and made it to orbit. It deployed from the stage
at 21:46 UTC but opened incompletely
Where Solar Sails Can Take Us
By the end of this decade, there's a good chance
solar sails will be used for a long-distance NASA
mission. Flight demos took place in early 2005,
with a sail-propelled craft launched five years
later, according to Sarah Gavit, program manager
for JPL's Solar Sail Technology Program. But just
how far will these solar sails be able to take us
and how fast will they get us there?
 Here rocket-propelled spacecraft will quickly jump out, moving
quickly toward its destination. On the other hand, a rocket less
spacecraft powered by a solar sail would begin its journey at a slow
but steady pace, gradually picking up speed as the sun continues
to exert force upon it.

Sooner or later, no matter how fast it goes, the rocket ship

will run out of power. In contrast, the solar sail craft has an endless
supply of power from the sun. Additionally, the solar sail could
potentially return to Earth, whereas the rocket powered vehicle
would not have any propellant to bring it back.

As it continues to be pushed by sunlight, the solar sail-

propelled vehicle will build up speeds that rocket powered vehicles
would never be able to achieve. Such a vehicle would eventually travel
at about 56 mi/sec (90 km/sec), which would be more than 200,000
mph (324,000 kph). That speed is about 10 times faster than the
space shuttle's orbital speed of 5 mi/sec (8 km/sec).