This is a survey paper of work that was performed by the Space Environmental Effects Team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in the area of laser energy propulsion concepts. Two techniques for laser energy propulsion were investigated. The first was ablative propulsion, which used a pulsed ruby laser impacting on single layer coatings and films. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the laser power density that produced an optimum coupling coefficient for each type of material tested. A commercial off‐the‐shelf multilayer film was also investigated for possible applications in ablative micro‐thrusters, and its optimum coupling coefficient was determined. The second technique measured the purely photonic force provided by a 300W CW YAG laser. In initial studies, the photon force resulting from the momentum of incident photons was measured directly using a vacuum compatible microbalance and these results were compared to theory. Follow‐on work used the same CW laser to excite a stable optical cavity for the purpose of amplifying the available force from incident photons.


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    Title :

    Survey of Beamed Energy Propulsion Concepts by the MSFC Space Environmental Effects Team


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    BEAMED ENERGY PROPULSION: First International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion ; 2002 ; Huntsville, Alabama (USA)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 664 , 1 ; 240-250


    Publication date :

    2003-05-14


    Size :

    11 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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