Spacecraft accelerate by directing propellant in the opposite direction. In the traditional approach, the propellant is carried on board in the form of material fuel. This approach has the drawback of being limited in Delta v by the amount of fuel launched with the craft, a limit that does not scale well to high Delta v due to the massive nature of the fuel. Directed energy photon propulsion solves this problem by eliminating the need for on-board fuel storage. We discuss our system which uses a phased array of lasers to propel the spacecraft which contributes no mass to the spacecraft beyond that of the reflector, enabling a prolonged acceleration and much higher final speeds. This paper compares the effectiveness of such a system for propelling spacecraft into interplanetary and interstellar space across various laser and sail configurations. Simulated parameters include laser power, optics size and orbit as well as payload mass, reflector size and the trajectory of the spacecraft. As one example, a 70 GW laser with 10 km optics could propel a 1 kg craft past Neptune (~30 au) in 5 days at 4% the speed of light, or a 1 g “wafer-sat” past Mars (~0.5 au) in 20 minutes at 21% the speed of light. However, even lasers down to 2 kW power and 1 m optics show noticeable effect on gram-class payloads, boosting their altitude in low Earth orbits by several kilometers per day which is already sufficient to be of practical use.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff prüfen

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen

    Bestellung bei Subito €


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    Orbital simulations of laser-propelled spacecraft


    Beteiligte:
    Zhang, Qicheng (Autor:in) / Lubin, Philip M. (Autor:in) / Hughes, Gary B. (Autor:in) / Melis, Carl (Autor:in) / Walsh, Kevin J. (Autor:in)

    Kongress:

    Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments IX ; 2015 ; San Diego,California,United States


    Erschienen in:

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    01.09.2015





    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Konferenz)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch



    Orbital simulations of laser-propelled spacecraft [9616-6]

    British Library Conference Proceedings | 2015


    Trajectory simulations for plasma propelled spacecraft

    Karavasilis, K. / Moskal'ov, S. / Sagdeev, R. et al. | AIAA | 2001


    A Millimeter-Scale Lorentz-Propelled Spacecraft

    Atchison, Justin / Peck, Mason | AIAA | 2007


    Orbital Dynamics of Low-earth Orbit Laser-propelled Space Vehicles

    Yamakawa, H. / Funaki, I. / Komurasaki, K. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2008


    Orbital Dynamics of Low‐Earth Orbit Laser‐Propelled Space Vehicles

    Yamakawa, Hiroshi / Funaki, Ikkoh / Komurasaki, Kimiya | American Institute of Physics | 2008