SOLAR SAIL

ABSTRACT

Hundreds of space missions have been launched since the last

lunar mission, including several deep space probes that have been sent to the
edges of our solar system. However, our journeys to space have been limited by
the power of chemical rocket engines and the amount of rocket fuel that a
spacecraft can carry. Today, the weight of a space shuttle at launch is
approximately 95 percent fuel. What could we accomplish if we could reduce
our need for so much fuel and the tanks that hold it?
International space agencies and some private corporations have
proposed many methods of transportation that would allow us to go farther, but
a manned space mission has yet to go beyond the moon. The most realistic of
these space transportation options calls for the elimination of both rocket fuel
and rocket engines -- replacing them with sails. Yes, that's right, sails.
Solar-sail mission analysis and design is currently performed
assuming constant optical and mechanical properties of the thin metalized
polymer films that are projected for solar sails. More realistically, however,
these properties are likely to be affected by the damaging effects of the space
environment. The standard solar-sail force models can therefore not be used to
investigate the consequences of these effects on mission performance. The aim
of this paper is to propose a new parametric model for describing the sail film's
optical degradation with time. In particular, the sail film's optical coefficients
are assumed to depend on its environmental history, that is, the radiation dose.
Using the proposed model, the optimal control laws for degrading solar sails are
derived using an indirect method and the effects of different degradation
behaviors are investigated for an example interplanetary mission.