Reflective and transmissive solar sails: Dynamics, flight regimes and applications

Abstract

Refractive and diffractive solar sails have been cited to yield benefits in both performance and utility over reflective sails, but their range of viable flight regimes and future applications have not been fully explored. In this paper, a flight model is developed to test and compare these transmissive sail designs under realistic conditions. Raw performance is translated into tangible flight characteristics within a range of flight regimes, such as rate change of orbital energy and minimum operational altitude, and used to make comparison with reflective sails and contemporary thrusters. Additionally, the sensitivity of these flight characteristics to certain orbital parameters is explored when operating under either a locally optimal or simplified Sun-pointing steering law. The developed flight model focuses on solar radiation pressure, atmospheric drag and the effects of eclipse and orbital precession; locally optimal steering laws are numerically generated for every flight regime using a ray tracing-derived performance sensitivity profile. Relative to an idealised reflective sail, the sensitivity of transmissive sail performance is found to be lower for altitude, but higher for orbital inclination. High performance transmissive sail designs are found to outperform idealised reflective ones in every flight regime nonetheless. Meanwhile, only certain lower performance designs demonstrate this trait; others retain advantage only within high inclination, low altitude orbits. 36m2 transmissive sails performing an orbit-raising manoeuvre from low Earth orbit are shown to generate transit times comparable to mid-range electric thrusters. In light of these findings, potential applications for transmissive sails are discussed, as well as several practical considerations and potential limitations.

Topics & Concepts