This Appendix summarizes the results of a Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc. report to the In-Space propulsion research group of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) that was authored by Taylor et al. in 2003. The subject of this report is the technological maturity, readiness, and capability of the photon solar sail to support space-exploration missions. Technological maturity for solar photon sail concepts is extremely high high for rectangular (or square) solar sail configurations due to the historical development of the rectangular design by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). L'Garde Inc., ILC Dover Inc., DLR, and many other corporations and agencies. However, future missions and mission analysis may prove that the rectangular sail design is not the best architecture for achieving mission goals. Due to the historical focus on rectangular solar sail spacecraft designs, the maturity of other architectures such as hoop-supported disks, multiple small disk arrays, parachute sails, heliogyro sails, perforated sails, multiple vane sails (such as the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1), inflated pillow sails, etc., have not reached a high level of technological readiness. (Some sail architectures are shown in Fig. A.1.) The possibilities of different sail architectures and some possible mission concepts are discussed in this Appendix.


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    Title :

    Photon Sail History, Engineering, and Mission Analysis


    Contributors:
    G. L. Matloff (author) / T. Taylor (author) / C. Powell (author)

    Publication date :

    2004


    Size :

    61 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Photon Sail History, Engineering, and Mission Analysis

    Matloff, Gregory L. / Taylor, Travis / Powell, Conley | NTRS | 2004



    Solar sail mission applications

    WRIGHT, J. / WARMKE, J. | AIAA | 1976


    Solar sail mission applications

    Wright, J. L. / Warmke, J. M. | NTRS | 1976


    Solar sail mission design

    Leipold, Manfred | TIBKAT | 2000